


Ars Longa, Vita Brevis

by West_of_Klovharun



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race (US) RPF
Genre: F/F, art is long and life is not, but I don't kill off characters I love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:20:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29509596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/West_of_Klovharun/pseuds/West_of_Klovharun
Summary: Trixie holds a coveted position as the lead assistant to Ru Paul, a certified Big Deal in the contemporary art world. When she finds out someone named Katya is going to help out around the studio she isn't happy about it, but as a wise woman once said about the vast possibilities of lip liner, anything can happen.
Relationships: Trixie Mattel/Katya Zamolodchikova
Comments: 55
Kudos: 52





	1. Titanium White

_**We got you a studio buddy**_ , is how it starts, in text from Michelle.

_**You did what now?** _

Trixie is making coffee in the studio kitchen, watching the water in the glass kettle start to boil, and she knows her reply is unprofessional but it matches Michelle’s tone, right? And she’s probably kidding. But as Trixie waits the word _buddy_ gets more ominous, progresses from a new Roomba to an untrained puppy, then a toddler with sticky hands, any of which would be less threatening than what comes next.

_**Her name is Katya. She’s had a hard time recently. Ru wants to help her out** _

The idea that Ru wants to give some random person a gig at his studio is hard to fathom. She tries to think of a single instance where her boss has ever made a point of helping someone in need and comes up empty. He talks about love and acceptance a lot but in practice? It’s not like Ru’s evil but he doesn’t, like, genuinely _care_.

The kettle clicks off. It occurs to her that this could be some kind of passive demotion, and they’re bringing in someone else to take over, but that’s impossible. Trixie’s amazing at her job. Maybe they just want to double-time the process, pump out more finished pieces. Except the big London show was in July and it’s only mid-August. Typically Ru wouldn’t produce many new concepts for the next few weeks, at least. Trixie should have the studio to herself.

 _Katya_. She pictures a bubbly eighteen-year-old, midway through her first semester of art school.

**_Is she a student?_ **

**_No. She’s older than you. In her thirties._** Even more threatening. Fine. Good.

**_And she’s coming today?_ **

**_She’s outside now_ **

Trixie stares at the phone, an actual chill running through her.

**_Be nice! Show her the ropes! I’ll be in tomorrow with Ru to talk about what comes next. x_ **

So this is it. The end of all that came before. She crosses the studio to the back door and gives everything one last look. It’s dramatic, sure, but this is her third year at the studio and the place feels more or less like it’s hers. Maybe not the pristine upstairs loft where Michelle sits and makes calls but the rest of it, the 3000 square feet of polished concrete spattered with streaks of oil paint and gesso, the big rolling tables and the rolls of canvas, even the supply drawers that Trixie organized herself on her own time, labeling everything with the retro labeller she found online. It’s not that she’s territorial, but once Michelle’s little niece came for an afternoon and started labeling random cans of paint with nonsense words and Trixie was just… very aware of that happening. So this isn’t going to be fun for her, this showing around of the new girl, sharing stuff, being “buddies.” This will be the opposite of fun.

She unlocks the door that leads to the back alley and there’s this person standing there. She’s pretty, which isn’t exactly welcome right now, but pale with dark makeup smudged around her eyes, and her white-blond hair is messy. She’s wearing ripped black jeans and boots and a t-shirt and her arms are a cluster of tattoos in black ink.

“Hi,” says Trixie. She’s been told by Michelle that her greetings always sound a little harsh and she doesn’t try to warm this one up. “You’re Katya?”

Katya looks surprised to hear this, about herself being herself, but she pulls it together. “Hi, yes. Hello. And you’re Trixie.”

“Come in,” says Trixie, because she has to.

The first thing Katya does when she walks inside is stare up at the high ceilings. It’s the same thing everyone does when they first see the place. She looks back at Trixie, her eyes wide and emphatic. “Cavernous,” she says.

“Um, yeah.”

Katya walks over to the paintings on the west wall, the completed ones waiting for the framer to come, and points to the smaller piece. “I like this,” she says. Which, okay, Trixie likes that one too. She’s proud of the colours she mixed and the fact that Ru didn’t make her change it much from his original mock-up, but the way Katya says it is so matter-of-fact, with zero awe. _It’s worth $70,0000_ , Trixie wants to say. She almost asks if Katya paints but doesn’t want to hear about it either way, so she says, instead: “You’ve worked in a studio before?”

“Not at all.”

“Art school?”

“Nope. I have no idea what I’m doing.” Katya smiles and her teeth are perfect, not just straight but ridiculously white. _Rich girl teeth_ , thinks Trixie.

“I mean generally in life,” she adds, “but also here, now. No clue.”

“Okay.” Because what else can you say to that. Trixie shows her through the arch that leads to the library, a room she organized herself last winter when she spent weeks unpacking boxes of books that were shipped back from Ru’s various storage containers. Neat rows of bindings line the shelves in tidy categories, a lamp hangs over a mid-century Swedish dining table with four deeply uncomfortable chairs, and two armchairs sit by the windows that look out onto the street. Trixie likes it here. She eats her lunch at the table when Michelle and Ru aren’t around. So much for all that.

Katya is touching everything she gets close to, tapping the spines of books in the theory section, reading aloud titles at random, a few them in French. It’s aggravating so Trixie takes her upstairs where the open-plan office gleams like an interior design spread, no budget spared where things can avoid being spattered in paint. Katya doesn’t look at it for very long. “This freaks me out,” she says quickly. “Intensely curated environments, you know? I like the downstairs better.” Which is exactly how Trixie feels, but she wouldn’t say it out loud. If you walk into a place like this and admit that it’s making your head explode then everyone might question why you’re here. But Katya doesn’t seem worried about that.

“I’ll show you the kitchen.”

They take the second staircase down to the smaller room beside the library, and Trixie points in the direction of the marble counters, the kettle, the sink. “There’s a mini fridge hidden under there if you want a Perrier or something. And that,” she nods to the door behind Katya, “is my room.”

Katya whips her head around to the closed door, then looks back at Trixie, surprised. “You live here?”

“For the last year.” Trixie leans against the counter. “Michelle was in Europe with Ru for a while and my lease was up. They wanted someone to keep an eye on things.” Meaning: someone they trust. That part is important. Her phone vibrates and it’s a text from Michelle, asking how things are going.

**_Just showing her around_ **

**_Great. I meant to tell you she’s sober. In case you were going to offer her something_ **

They keep a selection of booze in the kitchen for visitors, but it wouldn’t have occurred to Trixie to mention that at 10:30 in the morning. **_No problem_** , she replies. Not hers anyway.

Katya is back in the library, sitting cross-legged on the rug with an antique book from the top shelf open on her lap. “I’m preparing canvasses today,” Trixie tells her. “I guess you can help me pour sand.”

“Oh,” Katya closes the book, her fingers tapping the cover. “Michelle said I could work in here. On the phone, she said there were books to shelve.” Her eyes dart to the boxes in the corner that are full of foreign catalogues and anthologies featuring Ru’s work. “If that’s cool.”

“Sure,” Trixie says. “Fine.” Of course Michelle gave her the books to sort. Trixie loves that job. She turns to leave but stops herself, adds, “Let me know if you need help.”

Katya laughs, like her needing help is some joke between them.

. . . .

Trixie is slicking gesso over a blank canvas an hour later when she hears the alarm chime. She puts the roller down, goes to check on Katya, and finds her leaning out of the library window smoking a cigarette.

“I couldn’t get the front door open,” she says over her shoulder.

“We never use it. You can’t smoke in here.”

“Oh, shit.” She doesn’t try to act surprised, just takes another quick drag and pinches out the cigarette between her finger and thumb like some kind of cartoon cowboy.

“Go out back if you have to.”

“Will do.” But she doesn't move. They stand looking at each other.

Trixie thinks about asking, decides not to, does anyway. “How do you know Ru?”

“He was my nanny.”

Trixie makes a little squawk of disbelief. “Seriously,” she says.

“Ask him.”

Which makes her crazy, because of course she’s not going to ask Ru if he was somebody’s nanny. “Fine,” she says, and shrugs the conversation off to go back to work.

. . . .

 ** _She left early_** , Trixie texts Michelle that night, sitting on her bed in boxers and a t-shirt, her hair still wet from the shower. **_Around 3_**. She’s been debating how to handle this, doesn’t want to come across too vindictive but wants Michelle to know. **_She said you were okay with it_ **

**_No problem. How did it go with the books today?_ **

Trixie gets up and walks barefoot into the library to look things over once again. Everything’s properly shelved, as far as she can tell. **_All sorted_**. She almost adds, **_It was just a couple of boxes_** , but deletes it.

**_Did you go somewhere for lunch?_ **

**_I ate here. She wasn’t hungry_ **

That had been weird, Trixie sitting at the table with a sandwich while Katya poured through catalogues, scouring indexes and muttering names of exhibitions like she was trying to memorize them. Trixie had scrolled through her phone while she ate and neither of them spoke, except when Katya asked her if she’d ever been on the roof.

“No,” she replied. “I’ve never been on the roof.” And that was that.

Trixie double-checks the window that Katya opened to make sure it’s properly latched, and goes back into the warm light of her room. It’s well worth the rent she pays – which is affordable anyway, by the standards of the city – and now it seems especially sacred because it wasn’t part of the tour. Nobody gets to come and judge her vintage furniture, her grandmother’s quilt, her scratchy Turkish rug or the rack of vintage dresses. Even the easel in the corner, empty and neglected, is hers.

 ** _We’ll take Katya somewhere tomorrow_** , is Michelle’s final text of the night. _**Ru’s coming in.**_

. . . .

Trixie’s buttoning up one of the oxford shirts she uses as a painting smock when the alarm chimes and Michelle bustles through the door. Whatever potential there is to grill her about the Katya situation vanishes when Katya comes in behind her.

“If you can get used to the rain,” Michelle is saying over her shoulder, “you’ll love it here. There’s something very healing about the pacific ocean. And your first day went well? Trixie said you did great.” She looks at Trixie, who takes a sip of coffee and makes an optimistic noise into the mug to avoid answering.

“I did the books,” Katya says. She sounds a little wary. “In the boxes.”

“Good!” And Michelle pulls Katya in for an actual hug, patting her on the back repeatedly. “I’m so glad you’re here, Katya. We all are.”

This goes on for at least five full seconds, which seems like a long time for a work hug. Trixie tries to focus on taping the edges of a fresh canvas and thinks of her own first day, when all Michelle had cared about was making sure she knew where everything was and how to avoid getting in Ru’s way. It was about proving her competence, not some art therapy gig with no personal boundaries.

“Now, Ru suggested we do Felt for lunch,” Michelle is saying. “I wondered if you were okay with sitting in the bar, but if you’re not comfortable with that that’s totally fine.” She squeezes Katya’s arm for emphasis. “It’s totally fine either way.”

“Bars are okay,” says Katya. “Drinking’s never been my deal.”

“Right. Of course. It’s great that you _know_ that.”

Trixie thinks, not for the first time, that Michelle missed her calling as a talk show host. She would look right at home sitting on a soundstage with notes in one hand, narrowing her eyes thoughtfully at some hapless guest. Katya just stands there nodding steadily, hands in her pockets, absorbing it.

Trixie’s watching them so closely that when she lifts the canvas up she misjudges the weight and it wobbles in her arms. “I’ve got it,” she says quickly. Michelle’s coming forward but Katya darts over and Michelle abruptly backs off with her hands in the air like this is an important lesson about teamwork and far be it from her to intercede. Katya grabs both ends of the canvas, steadying and lifting it without too much effort, while Trixie keeps hold of the cross bar. Together they get the thing to the wall and then Trixie has to reach around Katya to balance the frame on its hooks. Her face burns from the awkwardness of that as much as having messed up, even slightly, in front of the others.

She’s spared from having to say thank you by the door alarm chiming.

“Hello hello!” cries Ru, as if they’re all hard of hearing. He strides into the studio in a trench coat and a vivid yellow suit, hands parted like he’s basking in thunderous applause.

“Ru!” Michelle looks as if she might actually clap. This is typical of them, to be fair, but Katya being here makes it feel like a lot. They all stand and watch Ru drape his coat across the chair that exists for him to drape coats over.

He turns and notices Katya and smiles brightly, arms at his sides. “Welcome to the jungle my dear.”

“Thanks,” Katya says. “I like your suit.”

Normally Trixie and Michelle would trail around after Ru as he decides the direction of the works in progress but this isn’t like a real work day. He limits himself to the painting Katya said she liked, the one that’s supposed to be finished. “What do you think about that orange Michelle?”

“I _like_ the orange,” says Michelle. “It's a beautiful orange, but if you don’t like it…”

“I don’t _dis_ like it.” He frowns over that for a second, then turns on his heel in a sudden reprieve and starts up the stairs to the loft. “Did Ross Call?”

Michelle follows, talking adamantly about Ross, and Trixie and Katya are left on the studio floor. It would have been nice, today in particular, if Ru had asked Trixie’s opinion on something. He does that sometimes and she wants Katya to know it. But Katya is standing by the cabinet where the brushes are kept and she looks like she’s far away. She has a brush in one hand and is rubbing her thumb against the bristles, over and over.

. . . .

Michelle drives them to the restaurant in her car. Neither Trixie or Katya are dressed for a place as nice as Felt but in the bar section it doesn’t matter as much. Anyway, they’re with Ru. One of his pieces is hanging in the main dining room and the cook comes out to say hello. Trixie wonders if Katya is impressed by any of this. She doesn’t seem to be.

Michelle orders a selection of appetizers and chats happily with Ru while Trixie and Katya listen, munching on their food when it comes. At least Trixie munches – it’s only the best in the city, no big deal – while Katya takes a few bites and fiddles around with her cutlery. At one point Ru turns to Katya and says, “How’s your dad doing?”

Katya sits up straighter. “He’s good,” she says. “He’s writing you a letter.”

Ru laughs. “I bet he is. I bet he is.” And he goes back to telling Michelle something about a gallery in Finland.

So Ru and Katya’s dad are friends. Or pen pals. It’s as though Trixie’s back to when she was new, trying to piece together how everyone relates to everyone else.

“But do you remember what happened in Prague with the, with the… oh what is it called?” Ru is telling hotel anecdotes now and Michelle is cackling at everything a little too loudly. Trixie takes a sip of her sparkling wine and thinks of all the reasons to be in awe of her boss. He’s famous, in the art world anyway, and brilliantly talented, but he can also be hard to take. Normally people don’t notice it because they’re intimidated or overwhelmed by him but Katya’s different. It’s clear that she’s not like, a _fan_.

“And in the lobby, remember?” Ru crows with laughter. “Remember the fellow with the, oh god Michelle, what was his name?”

“Jan! Tomas! No, Jonas!” Michelle keeps listing names, stressing the accent a little too hard.

It’s kind of embarrassing actually, listening to them go on and on. And just then, the instant Trixie realizes embarrassment is her primary emotion, Katya catches her eye and winks. It’s not a subtle wink either but a big exaggerated one with a grimace, something Ru and Michelle would definitely notice if they weren’t so focused on each other. Trixie almost chokes on her wine.

“Trixie are you okay?” Michelle is staring at her.

“I'm good,” she sputters, trying not to glare at Katya as she wipes her chin. “It was just funny, about the… guy in the lobby.”

Ru nods impatiently, like of course it was hilarious about the guy in the lobby, and kicks off his story again.

Katya sits for the rest of the lunch like nothing happened, nodding and chuckling at the appropriate times, and Trixie thinks about how two-faced that might seem if anyone else did it

. . . .

“Wait,” says Kim. “If you don’t think she’s a bitch, why does she piss you off so much?” 

It’s Saturday. They’re on speaker phone while Trixie pairs socks in the kitchen.

“Because she didn’t earn it!” She throws a ball of socks at her laundry basket and it bounces out and lands on the floor. “She absorbed all this stuff in the cradle through some kind of rich-kid osmosis while I had blunder my way through and fuck up constantly.”

“You never tell me about the fuck-ups,” Kim says. “I want to hear about those.”

“Nobody hears about them, believe me. I fix them before anyone finds out.” Trixie picks the basket up and goes into her room, rests it on the bed and sits down. “Do you have any idea how hard I’ve worked at this job?”

“I know you’re a total psycho, wherever you are.”

“Thank you. Exactly.”

“So you don’t have to worry about her out-performing you.”

“Well no kidding.”

Kim is quiet. Trixie pictures her Chicago apartment, the sunset coming in through the windows, then remembers Chicago is two hours ahead and it will be dark there now. “I just think it’s weird that I’m supposed to keep tabs on her mental health or whatever.” After lunch Michelle had called her up to the loft, while Ru and Katya talked in the library about who knows what, and told Trixie to please let her know if anything concerned her.

“Ok that part’s weird,” Kim admits. “On the bright side, it doesn’t sound like she’s cut out for long-term employment.”

“Most people would consider that fairly dark-sided, Kim.” Trixie hears her chuckling. “But it’s not like I didn’t think it.” She picks up a ball of socks and weighs it in her hand. “She’s not _bad_ , you know? I just want it the way it was.”

“Maybe you won’t have to wait very long.”

. . . .

Katya’s only at the studio from Wednesday to Friday. The first two days of the week are reserved for her therapy sessions, according to Michelle, and apparently that’s an all-day thing or it requires all day to recover from. Whatever. At least Trixie has that time to herself. When Katya’s there it’s less about working and more about finding stuff she’s willing to let another person to do. She has Katya washing brushes and using the shop vac and taking out the recycling. It’s clear pretty fast that if she doesn’t have a task she gets restless and wanders around fiddling with everything and asking questions, like why does Trixie sprinkle water on the backs of stretched canvas or use four different types of black oil paint. To be fair, she never asks the stuff that some random person off the street might, like why Ru doesn’t do any of the actual painting if he signs his name to everything, and why it’s all worth so much money, and what any of it is supposed to mean.

There’s a lot Trixie doesn’t ask either. She doesn’t ask why Katya’s here instead of the East Coast, where she’s from. She doesn’t ask about the sobriety situation, obviously, which is something Katya and Ru have in common, and she still refuses to bring up the nanny story. In general they don’t even talk unless Trixie’s delegating some new task. She’s relieved when she realizes she can put Katya on sand duty because there’s always sand on the floor to be swept up and filtered so it can be sprinkled over gesso for texture. Katya sings under her breath when she sweeps, and the only thing that keeps that from being creepy is that it’s always some dumb Russian pop song.

Trixie would like to distract herself with her own responsibilities but there’s not a lot to do. It makes her even more irritable. She wants to show Katya how important she is and instead she’s fuzzing over minor details in paintings that are more or less finished.

The days stack up. Three weeks in, Katya tries to wash non-soluble paint off a roller in the double sink and it goes everywhere, splashing the walls with the watery base-coat and spilling it onto the floor. “We toss those rollers when we’re done,” says Trixie when she sees it. “You can’t wash latex, I told you.”

“I’ll clean it up.” It’s already past five on Friday evening and Katya usually takes off on the dot like she has somewhere to be, but Trixie doesn’t tell her to go ahead and leave. She doesn’t help, either, just points to a box of rags from the automotive supply place down the street and some paint thinner, and goes on with what she was doing. When Katya finally leaves Trixie inspects the sink area and it’s clean – cleaner than before the spill – but she looks and looks until she finds a spot under the paper towel dispenser that’s still speckled with beige. It’s something that nobody but her would ever notice and Trixie wipes it away, feeling petty. It’s not even a nice color.

. . . . 

The following Wednesday Katya comes in with a little waft of cigarette smoke and tells Trixie, as she shrugs off her coat that, that Michelle wants her to learn how to paint. 

It’s fine. Trixie has been bracing herself for this, has prepared a baby’s-first-canvas with crisp outlines pounced in red chalk. That way she can see how Katya works without setting her loose on anything real. They stand side by side at a table and Trixie takes her through mixing up a muted pink, shows her how to fold the colors into each other with the palette knife.

“Titanium white, cadmium red medium, carbon black.” She steps back, hands Katya the tool. “You try.”

Katya slides the blade through a dollop of fresh white paint, leaving a slash of red. “Oh,” she says, “I like this," and she sounds so sincere it’s like she’s been lying about everything else.

“Now try to match that with…” Trixie looks around, points to a section on one of the paintings on the wall. “That purple on 304. Start from scratch if you want.”

She expects Katya to grab a tube of ready-made violet but she grabs a couple of different blues and experiments with each of them. When there are three shades on the palette she picks up a small brush and dips it in the hue she's chosen. She frowns with concentration, perfectly still for once as she paints carefully up to the pounce line. Her eyes go to Trixie as she dips her brush again. “Tell me more about painting.”

“I mean,” Trixie folds her arms. “Like what.”

“Anything.”

Trixie thinks. Finally she says, “The cheap reds never dry, so with any red color you want the most expensive brand. Old Holland, Michael Harding. More expensive means more pigment, so it feels stiffer to work with. Sometimes I use mineral spirits to soften it a little.”

“Will you show me?”

So she does.


	2. Lapis Lazuli

Over the next few days Trixie explains why they use a thicker canvas for some paintings and Belgian linen on others, how the layers of sand and gesso build up to allow lighter colors to be wiped back and show the texture underneath, how carbon black dries with a different texture than mars black, and mars black dries differently than cold. Most of this she learned here at the studio, not in school, and she’s surprised by how little she minds sharing it. The way Katya paints surprises Trixie too. It’s slow and careful, the opposite of what she expected.

The little painting is finished on Friday and Trixie has to admit that it’s good. “The colors are matched well,” she says. “You didn’t cheat the lines either.”

Katya is watching her, still holding her paintbrush. “This one’s just a goof though, right?”

“Yeah, we’ll paint over it. You might as well get used to that.” Trixie goes over to the sink to wash her hands and when she turns around Katya has painted an eyeball on one of the shapes in the painting, and six little legs.

“Another triumph.” Katya spins on her stool. “Want to go for lunch?”

It’s something they’ve never done before. Trixie tends to eat in the library and Katya usually ducks out and comes back in an hour with a half-eaten falafel or salad roll in her hand. Today they go to the place around the corner, a well-worn little diner that flies in the face of neighbourhood gentrification. They sit at a booth and order, and rain trickles down the steam-fogged window past a motley assortment of bamboo plants as the waitress brings them cups of coffee.

“So,” says Trixie.

Katya looks across at her. She has a tiny steak of blue paint on her chin. “So,” she says.

“So Ru Paul used to change your diapers.”

“Don’t forget the breastfeeding.”

Trixie leans forward, her hands on the table. “You better tell me this damn story I swear to god.”

“He used to watch me after school sometimes, in New York." Katya sips her coffee. "He called himself my nanny as a joke and it stuck.”

“Your dad is a friend of his?”

“My parents are, yeah. Or were. It’s not like they still see each other much.” She leans back in her seat, looking Trixie in the eye. “Now I get to ask you something.”

“Go ahead.”

“How’d you end up with this gig?”

“Oh.” She’s slightly relieved, for some reason. “I had a bunch of my paintings up at a café where my ex worked, when I first moved here. Michelle bought two of them for a guest room in her summer house. I knew she worked with Ru and I heard their last assistant quit so I presented her with a list of stuff I could do. She hired me.”

Katya lifts her eyebrows. “The can-do spirit.”

“I was living in my car. I didn’t have a lot of choice about trying.”

“I wondered if you painted.” She doesn’t seem fazed about the car. “I mean, your own stuff.”

“Not lately.” The waitress comes with their sandwiches. When she’s gone again Trixie asks, “How do your parents know Ru?”

“They were in the same scene in the seventies and eighties.” Katya takes a bite of her sandwich, chewing quickly so she can ask another question. “What do you paint? Self-portraits?”

“Just because I’m beautiful doesn’t mean I’m self-obsessed.”

Katya grins. “I used to draw.” She pulls up her sleeve and points at a tattoo on her forearm, a child’s scrawl of a monster with stick-arms outstretched and fingers like hooks.

“Right,” says Trixie. “Self-portraits.”

Katya has a dumb, wheezy laugh. Trixie doesn’t expect to feel so good about causing it. She spends the rest of lunch telling stories about the local art scene and Katya laughs so much at her impression of Santino, a local art critic, that it gets Trixie going too.

“Oh my _god_ ,” says Katya, “you laugh like a little kid screaming in terror, you know that?”

“Girl, you laugh like whatever scared that kid.”

That sets Katya off again and she grabs Trixie’s arm and shakes it back and forth for what seems like a long time. It doesn’t feel awkward at all.

. . . .

Katya has her own car, a little hybrid hatchback, so on Wednesday Trixie gives her the business card and sends her to the art supply store. She half-expects to never see Katya again but she’s back in forty minutes with everything on the list.

“The woman who owns that place is catatonic,” she says as she carries the bags in. “Like genuinely asleep. I could have pocketed the brushes and the mineral spirits and she’d never have known.” She drops the bags on the table, pulls the receipt out of her back pocket. “It came to more than five hundred dollars, by the way. Hope that’s… normal.”

She goes to hand Trixie the receipt but Trixie says, “Upstairs. There’s a box on Michelle’s desk.” Katya watches as Trixie goes through the purchases and pulls out the tube of oil paint she’s looking for. “Lapis Lazuli Afghan,” she says. “Three hundred and sixty dollars for a thirty five millilitre tube.”

"Sadly they keep that one behind the till.”

“So the only reason you didn’t steal from a small business owner is because they keep what you wanted behind the till?” Trixie places the little tube on the table where the other blues are piled. "Good to know."

“My thieving days are behind me," Katya says happily. “Now I get my thrills by paying for stuff with Ru Paul’s money.” 

“Wow,” Trixie gathers the new brushes to put them away. “Personal growth.”

They can go back and forth like this now and it makes everything easier. Trixie teaches Katya to stretch canvasses and she’s surprisingly strong, willing to wrestle with the clamps and rough fabric until she’s cursing at the raw tips of her fingers in various languages. When Trixie tells her to quit showing off Katya says she can’t speak any of it properly, but it sounds fluent enough. Trixie has to practice before she can even say _Zamolochivoka_ , Katya’s last name. She lets her put one of her crazy songs on while they clean up at the end of the day and Katya spins around the studio with the shop vac, taking little breaks to do pseudo-balletic leaps and interpretive arm stuff. She’s weirdly acrobatic, simultaneously ridiculous and impressive, and Trixie doesn’t know what to do with her face.

“Dance with me Tritzie.” Katya calls to her from across the room, arms outstretched.

“Ew no.” She’s peeling tape from a finished painting, trying not to laugh and smudge the clean edge. “I’m calling HR.”

What she tells Michelle, the next time she’s asked, is that it’s going fine.

 _ **Great**_ , is all Michelle says. And then: **_Remind her about the book for my sister!_ **

. . . .

Trixie finds her in the kitchen the next morning, rinsing the French press in the sink. She leans against the counter and says, “The book for Michelle’s sister?”

“Oh right.” Katya tugs her phone out of her pocket. “Tell her it’s on its way. I mean it isn’t, yet. It will be.” This is a habit of hers, Trixie’s noticed, where she’ll catch herself in a little lie and correct it, even if it doesn’t matter.

Katya frowns at her phone. “What’s her sisters name?”

“Linda.”

Katya nods, starts typing. “How do you spell it?”

“L…”

“Yeah.”

Trixie grins. “A…”

“Okay.” 

“Katya it's Linda with an I. It's not Landa.”

“It’s just…” Katya doesn’t smile, doesn’t look up from her phone. “My dad needs to get the inscription right.”

That’s how Trixie finds out that her dad is an author. As soon as she’s alone in the studio she goes into the library and finds them, a whole half-shelf of novels by Peter Zamolochikov. She should have figured it out sooner - it’s not like it’s a common name – but who expects anyone to have famous parents? She looks up his Wikipedia article and sees that his first novel is taught in schools and there's a long list of awards and accolades. She’s even seen one of the movies based on his books, years ago. It was pretty bleak.

Katya might have said something, even if they just started talking properly the other day, but maybe it never came up for a reason. She thinks of Katya’s face when she sent that text earlier. A messed-up dad situation is something Trixie can relate to, but then she flips through one of the books to its dedication page and finds _for Katya, with love_.

So maybe she doesn’t have a clue.

. . . .

“Hey.”

When Trixie looks up Katya has stopped sweeping and stands there with the broom, watching her. “Got something on your mind?”

“Um.” Trixie is cutting rags into smaller rags at the table. “Just… did Linda like the book?”

“Oh man. I don’t want to know either way.” Katya starts sweeping again. “I mean hopefully she didn’t hate it.”

It gets quiet, just the sound of cloth tearing and the broom against the sandy floor. _For Katya, with love_. “I guess these conversations get old, huh.”

Katya glances up at her. “The dad stuff? It’s whatever. A lot of people our age don’t even know who he is.”

 _“Our_ age?"

“Shut up you cow.” But she says it the way Trixie would say it to Kim, the way friends talk to each other. Katya leans the broom against the wall. “I’m going out to smoke.”

“Wait, come here a sec.” Trixie holds up a clean rag. “You’ve got gesso on your face.”

Katya comes over and stands in front of her and Trixie wipes the smear from her cheekbone. “Okay,” Trixie says when it’s gone. She folds the rag in her hands. “Go.”

. . . .

Michelle takes them for lunch the week after, to a place she likes that overlooks the harbour. She thanks Katya for the book as soon as they order. “Tell Peter my sister loves it. She’s so impressed by him. Have you read his work, Trixie?”

“Nope.”

“You should. You really have to.”

“Okay.” Usually she reads whatever Michelle tells her to so they’ll have more to talk about, but this time she knows she won’t. She can feel Katya watching her from across the table.

“He’s a brilliant mind,” Michelle is saying. “Always was. Such a wordsmith.” Nobody says anything so she turns to Katya. “How are you settling in to your new place?”

“It’s good for now.” She's drumming her fingers on the tablecloth. “I still don’t really know the city.”

You will.” There’s a pause and then Michelle leans in, a little smile on her face. “Are you seeing anyone?”

“A few people," Katya says.

 _A few people?_ Trixie carefully takes a sip of water. The waiter brings their salads and she hopes that’s enough to distract Michelle, but it isn’t.

“Anyone promising? Girls? Guys?”

“I’ve being seeing this one girl for a few weeks, but it’s, I don’t know.” Katya seems to notice her own fingers tapping and her hand goes still. “It’s fine.”

“Stability is important.” Michelle takes a bite of her salad.

Katya picks up her fork. “So I’ve heard.”

Okay, thinks Trixie, it’s done now. But Michelle is dabbing her mouth with a napkin and asking if she has a picture.

“Sure.” Katya pulls her phone out, scrolls through Instagram, then passes it across the table.

“Oh she’s beautiful.” Michelle actually gasps, clutching the phone. “She’s obviously a model.”

Katya nods. “Model, artist… something like that.”

Trixie is stuffing kale in her mouth, trying to look so involved with her food that it’s like she’s not here, but Michelle hands the phone over to her and she has to take it. The girl on the screen has jet black hair in a Bettie Page haircut and her absurdly beautiful face stares haughtily into the camera. Trixie nods, still chewing, and hands the phone back to Katya.

“I love her makeup,” Michelle says. “She’s stunning.” There’s a horrible moment where Trixie thinks Michelle will turn and ask who Trixie’s been seeing and why not, why doesn’t she, when _will_ she, but it doesn’t happen. They eat their salads and the next thing Michelle says is that Coco Peru’s opening is on the weekend. Trixie doesn’t want to be too quiet so she asks Michelle how her niece is doing, feigning so much interest in the details of an eleven-year-old girl’s education that Katya nudges her foot under the table. Trixie can't look at her though. It feels like too big a risk.

. . . .

**_Kim,_ _help_ **

**_No. What_ **

**_Explain to me how can someone be a complete basket case who just moved here and still meet people and date models_ **

Her phone rings. “I can’t text right now," says Kim. "I’m doing eyeliner. And since when do you have any interest in meeting people? You’re like the world’s loudest introvert.”

It’s seven at night. Trixie is pacing around the library. “I’m just focused on my job.”

“You think Ru Paul’s going to care if you make out with someone?”

“Michelle would care. Apparently Michelle cares a lot.”

“You’re not just mad that Katya’s dating someone else? You do seem semi-obsessed.”

Trixie stops pacing. “That’s a stretch.”

“You said she was hot.”

“I didn’t say that! All I ever told you is that she’s shorter, thinner, and also somehow stronger than me, which makes no sense. And she has whiter teeth.” She stares furiously at the wall of books across the room. “She’s too old anyway.”

“What, thirty-four? Is that your limit?”

“When she works with me it is. Besides, can you imagine if we hooked up and it went sideways?”

Kim snorts. “Can you imagine if you hooked up with anyone ever again?”

“I hate you. Goodbye.”

. . . .

Trixie stands in front of her mirror in the dress she ordered weeks ago from London. It’s black with a white collar, nothing like the colourful retro prints she likes, but people will know it’s expensive without being showy and she’ll blend in at the opening. Tonight that feels important. Usually she’s enthusiastic about events like this. It boosts her ego to look the right way and know what to say to people. Now all she wants is credit for showing up.

She takes a cab downtown and gets out at the gallery. It was a courthouse once and it’s outgrown itself - the site for a bigger building is a few blocks away – but Trixie likes the grandeur of the old glass dome and the lion statues that look out on the rain-soaked square. Inside the marble floors are wet with footprints. She checks her coat and makes her way through the ground-floor exhibition halls, scanning the crowd for Ru or Michelle. A server comes past with wine and she takes a glass, drinks it quickly to help her relax. Coco’s light boxes are costumed self-portraits that focus on the representation of women in film and fashion and they’re brilliant, probably, but Trixie’s never liked looking at art in fancy clothes.

She makes her way to the rotunda, where she finds Michelle and Ru talking to Coco herself. Trixie knows better than to barge into the conversation so she stands near a wall, trying to stay in Michelle’s field of vision without actively hovering. Eventually Michelle sees her and lifts her glass, smiling approvingly, but doesn't call her over. Which is fine. At least they know Trixie’s here. Some acquaintances of Ru’s recognize her and come to say hello and she chats politely, then excuses herself to get another glass of wine. It’s all about knowing when to end a conversation, at these things, and never trying to be funny; she knows her version of funny is generally considered scathing. She makes her way through the room like that, saying hello, remembering names. Most people only want to talk to her because of her proximity to Ru and she’s used to that. Actually it’s kind of helpful. It keeps her from feeling like she has to explain what she’s doing here, where she’s from.

. . . .

The crowd has filled out now. Trixie is drinking her third glass of wine, definitely her last, and looking up at the dome above. Through the thick curved glass she can see the underside of a seagull, the white belly and flat triangular feet. It must be wet and cold up there but she thinks she might prefer it to this. If she could speak to Michelle for a minute she could excuse herself and leave but everyone seems to have shuffled around and Trixie doesn’t see anybody she recognizes.

She resigns herself to another circuit of the ground floor. It makes her self-conscious to cut purposely through wandering groups of people and she takes a flute of champagne from a passing tray to have something to hold. She’s starting to think Ru and Michelle have ducked out early when she turns a corner and sees Katya.

She’s wearing a tailored suit. She looks really good.

It’s crazy how nervous Trixie is, like the alcohol has had zero effect. She takes a long drink of champagne and places the flute carefully on a side table, then goes over. When Katya sees her she smiles like they haven’t seen each other in weeks and grabs Trixie's hand, squeezing it.

“You made it,” says Trixie. She has a follow-up joke ready but someone bumps into her shoulder and apologizes and it throws her off. “You look really good,” she says instead. It feels like an insane thing to say. She’s already regretting the champagne.

“You do too,” says Katya. Somehow they’re still holding hands.

“I’m…” Trixie can’t get over how good Katya looks. “I’m a little drunk, I just realized.”

Katya nods sagely. “That’ll happen.”

Trixie has to fight the sudden urge to drag her back through the crowd and show her the upside down seagull because Katya, of all people, might appreciate it, but then someone else is there, a beautiful girl with a Bettie Paige haircut who looks absolutely deadly.

Katya lets go of Trixie’s hand and touches the other girl’s arm with her fingers, then touches Trixie’s wrist again like she’s linking them together, and Trixie decides that Katya is very good at this thing where people touch each other. “This is Ru’s assistant,” Katya tells the girl. “Trixie, this is Violet.”

Violet gives Katya a playful swat on the arm and somehow manages to make the gesture languid. “I thought _you_ were Ru’s assistant,” she says, and turns back to Trixie with a little smile. “She’s such a liar. I can’t imagine how you feel about working with her.”

“Um.” Trixie is having a much worse time than she thought.

“Come on,” Violet tells her, like it's a dare. “What’s Katya like at the studio?”

Violet's using her as a prop, Trixie knows that. It’s the same thing Trixie did with the champagne, only the champagne was clearly a terrible idea and she doesn’t want to think about the champagne ever again. It's Trixie’s cue to say something funny and light about Katya being a goof so they can all laugh. “Actually,” she says. “I didn’t want anyone’s help at first, at all, but it turns out I like having her there. She’s really good with the paintings, really helpful. It's good."

There’s a beat where they both stare at her like she’s speaking in tongues and then Katya opens her mouth and at points at Violet like she’s beaten her in a game of checkers. Violet just smiles and says smoothly “I love that.” She wraps her slender arm around Katya’s waist and says to her, “Look at you, all successful in the workplace.” Her eyes flicker over to Trixie and it seems entirely possible that she’s about to kiss Katya or bite her neck or something, but someone taps Trixie on the shoulder and she whirls around gratefully to talk about anything else.

The gratitude doesn’t last. She’s stuck reviewing her life choices as the guy – whatever his name is – gives her his longwinded opinion on one of Ru’s old installations. Then he moves onto why Ru’s newer work is less impactful than his earlier stuff, and how he would advise Ru from this point on, and Trixie has lost sight of Katya and Violet which is both good and bad because they’re probably doing sex just out of view. Now the guy seems to be listing the names of cities he’s lived in and she’s not sure why that started. He gets to Hamden, Connecticut and Trixie says, “Excuse me.”

He stares at her, waiting, and she doesn’t bother adding more, just veers away. She’s headed for an exit when Katya and Violet are suddenly in front of her again. Trixie imagines herself swaying in place, tries stand up straight and normalize her expression. Violet says something to her that’s probably very sultry and droll but she can’t make it out so she just mouths “sorry” to Katya and keeps going. Better to get out, find a balcony, clear her head.

There’s a staircase around the first corner. She goes up it and slips past the little rope barrier at the top, relieved when nobody stops her. It’s quieter here, away from the crowd, and most of the lights are off which seems like a plus. She wanders through an exhibition of artist maquettes in the half-lit gloom, past several monumental plaster molds used to cast sculptures, but she can’t find a door that leads outside. There’s only a marble bench between a giant hollow donkey and a rain-streaked window, and that will have to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do I need to say that feedback is great? Feedback is amazing.


	3. Red Gold Lake

For what feels like an hour Trixie sits perfectly still, singing songs in her head to pass the time. The plan is to be less drunk, to get it together here until she’s relatively clear-headed or until somebody finds her and kicks her out. It’s not like she did that much damage anyway, just walked away from some fan of Ru Paul’s and humiliated herself in front of Katya’s hot girlfriend. And Katya. That too.

She gets up and wanders from window to window, tries to see out past the rain and the bright lights on the building’s façade, but it’s all a wet glare. The bench is cold and hard but she goes back to it. She doesn’t know how much time has passed because her phone is in the pocket of her coat downstairs. When she hears someone coming she turns to get up, saying “Sorry, just looking for the…”

But it’s Katya who walks toward her, who sits down on the bench. “I have to admit,” she says, sticking her legs out in front of her. “It’s gratifying that you seem to hate these things as much as I do. I expected you to work that room like a machine.”

“I considered it.” She’s relieved that she’s not slurring, at least. “I chose instead to panic and hide.”

“My kind of girl.” Katya pats her pockets. “Want some gum? It’s Nicorette.”

“Wow no thanks.” Trixie looks away as Katya pops the piece of gum into her mouth. She takes a deep breath. “Where’s Violet?”

“Violet? I don’t know.” Katya sits up and stretches her arms over her head, looking up at the donkey. “We just broke things off.”

“Wait, what?” Trixie stares at her. “How long have I been up here?”

“We’d only been dating for a couple of weeks," Katya says. "It wasn’t that serious.”

“But why?” Trixie hears how shrill her voice is and brings it down. “I mean don’t tell me if you don’t want to, but it’ll distract me from feeling really...” _Stupid,_ she almost says. “Dizzy.”

“Violet loves this stuff.” Katya tilts her head in the direction of the party. “She loves the idea that I know Ru Paul. She wanted me to introduce her to him and Michelle so I did. Because she wanted me too. They liked her.”

“I’ll bet they did.”

“Yeah. Violet’s great at…” She waggles her hand in the air, looking for the word. “Culture? I was going to say people but it’s a lot less personal than that. She’s cool, don’t get me wrong, she can be really funny, but it’s kind of off-putting, after a while.”

Trixie feels like she’s still catching up. “So you let her social climb and _then_ you dumped her?”

Katya shrugs. “It’s not like we were exclusive. You know how it is. Sometimes it’s time to move on from people.”

“Like it’s that easy.”

“You don’t find it easy?”

Trixie shakes her head emphatically, then wishes she hadn’t. “No,” she says, holding onto her forehead with one hand. “I do not find that easy.”

“You don’t see how people can date without catching feelings?”

“Yes. That.” The alcohol is making her say the stuff she’s thinking. “And then the other thing is even worse.”

“The other thing meaning relationships? Or being alone?”

“Relationships. No wait, both. Both are bad in different ways.” Trixie groans into her hands. “I’m a mess, okay? Maybe it’s not _obvious_ , like with you…”

Katya bursts out laughing.

“Shut up!” Trixie swats at her with her hand and it’s not a languid swat. “I’m baring my soul!”

“Okay, okay. I’m listening. I’m listening.” Katya rubs her sleeve where Trixie hit it. She looks like she still wants to laugh. “You don’t believe in love.”

“I do!” Trixie screeches, much too loud. She looks up at the donkey hopelessly. “I need to go outside.”

Katya stands up. “Let’s get your coat.”

. . . .

The rain has stopped but the air feels so cold and damp that Trixie feels like they're walking through a cloud. Katya hooks their arms as they cross the street. “Feel better?”

“Sort of.” Trixie lets her take the lead, relieved to be moving away from the gallery, and for a while they just walk. Finally Trixie asks, “Was Violet upset though?”

“She was annoyed that she didn’t do it first.” They’re passing a homeless guy on the sidewalk and Katya pulls a bill out of her pocket.

“I don’t have any cash,” Trixie mutters.

“I got it.” Katya bends down to give it to him, wishes him a nice night, and they keep walking.

“She wasn’t sad?”

“Who Violet? She’s not the type to get attached. That’s probably why we hooked up in the first place.”

“Must be nice.”

“I wouldn’t call it _nice_.”

“Well it sounds really convenient not to care.”

Katya makes a small frustrated sound. “Are you going to tell me who broke your heart, Trixie Mattel? Or do I have to keep guessing?”

“Oh please.” Trixie feels her face getting hot. “Like you’ve really been guessing.”

“Every night in my diary I list the possibilities.” Katya gives her arm a little tug. “I saw your face at that lunch with Michelle. Humour me.”

Trixie looks around, stalling for time. “Where are we going anyway?”

“Here. I live here.” Katya points to the closest building, a lobby that's all glass and aluminum and cold white light. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a key. “If you feel like it you can come up, get warm, call a cab?”

She waits until Trixie says “Yeah, that sounds good,” before heading toward the lobby door.

. . . .

The apartment is a one-bedroom, conspicuously new. “I didn’t have much say in this place,” Katya says as she lets Trixie in. “My parents wanted something as sterile as possible so I’m trying to offset that by leaving my crap everywhere.”

There are books and clothes strewn over every surface but Trixie doesn’t care. She takes her shoes off and drops them in a heap by the door, then goes straight for the big low couch beneath the window. The view looks out on more new buildings, identical to this one, and between them is a little park with a spherical sculpture in a ring of benches. Trixie turns back to the apartment and notices a rectangular panel in the wall by the window that she thinks is a television at first, but it’s the wrong shape. She looks at Katya, who has taken her suit jacket off and is opening cabinets in the kitchen area. “You have a fireplace?”

“I do.” Katya puts a pair of mugs on the counter. “But I don’t know how it works.”

“There’s got to be a switch.”

“Oh right. Maybe the hallway? This place is all switches.”

So Trixie goes to the panel in the hall and flickers various lights until the fireplace turns on. The fake embers glow a deep artificial red and she looks at them, gratified, and gets back on the couch, tucking her legs under her.

After a while Katya brings the mugs over and sets them on the coffee table. “Look at me hosting,” she says. She goes back for the teapot, brings it over and pours the tea, and settles on the couch next to Trixie with her cup in her hand. “Okay, heartbreak. Let’s get into it.” She lifts her feet onto the couch and sits sideways, crosslegged, facing Trixie. “Unless you don’t want to.”

“I thought I was going to marry someone,” Trixie says right away. It’s easier if she doesn't think first. “And then two weeks after we moved here from Chicago my stupid ex broke up with me, so I don’t date anymore.”

“Why, nobody else compares?” Katya takes a sip of tea. “Because your ex sounds incredible, Trixie, all stupid and everything.”

“I felt safe with her! Whatever.” She pulls her knees up close to her chest. “That’s a big thing.”

“Safe from what?”

She doesn't know how to answer that, or if she can. The trouble with being drunk is how her mood keeps going up and down, so she just sits there, watches the flames wiggle around in the fireplace, and doesn't say anything.

Katya puts her cup on the coffee table. “Now me,” she says, “I feel safer sleeping around than trying to make it work with just one person. That’s my thing. I’m no model citizen, in case you were wondering.”

“I really wasn’t.”

“So was it something that guy said back there that set you off?”

“The guy at the opening?” Trixie shakes her head. “He was just trying to understand why I get to work with Ru Paul and he doesn’t. I’ve had a lot of conversations like that. Most of the time it doesn’t bother me at all.” She looks out the window and touches her finger to the glass to see how cold it is. “I just feel like a Martian at those things. All those rich people.”

“Them?” Katya leans against the side of the couch, her head propped on her hand. “They’re all scared of you. Take it from me, a creature of privilege who’s been handed everything my whole life. Being a Martian is the best thing you can be if you want to make art. The rest of us are just regurgitating each other’s bullshit over and over.”

“Thanks for that image.”

“I’m serious,” Katya says. “It’s not a great thing to come from the very place you want to excel in.”

“So wait.” Trixie frowns and looks at the stack of books by the couch, then back at Katya, slowly piecing it all together. “Do you write?”

“I used to.”

“Why’d you stop?”

“The obvious reasons. Who’s giving the pep talk here?”

“Just,” Trixie isn’t sure what she’s about to say. “Don’t make it sound like you're one of the assholes. You’re being really nice to me tonight.”

There’s a pause where they both sit looking at each other. Outside the rain is starting again.

“You’re still cold,” Katya says.

“How are you not?” Trixie shivers, aware suddenly of how cold she actually is. “The fireplace is the only thing keeping me alive right now.”

“I’m a lava person. Here.” Katya pulls an orange blanket from behind her and gets up on her knees to drape it over Trixie's shoulders, taking care that it’s pulled up around her neck. She sits back again. “I always wondered what a broken heart felt like.”

“Oh, it’s great." Trixie huddles into the blanket. “It feels like there’s nowhere you can be, no place that doesn’t hurt. Everyone can tell you’re walking around with your skin ripped off and anything that takes you further away from it, like time and things changing, even if they’re getting better, is just more loss.” She pulls the blanket up over her head like a hood, so she can’t even see Katya. “You miss it, is all.”

“What do you miss?”

“Just, the feeling that things are going to be okay, I guess.”

“Right, sorry. You don’t have to do specifics.”

“No, it’s, that _is_ what I miss.” Trixie pulls the blanket from her head and looks at Katya, feeling caught out. “Not her, so much…” She swallows. Her voice has gone funny. “I don't know if it was really about her, actually.”

“Either way, it’s probably good to know, don’t you think? Hey.” Katya reaches out to where Trixie’s foot is sticking out of the blanket and holds onto it. “You’re alright.”

“Nope,” whispers Trixie. “I’m not even a human person.” A fat tear slides down her cheek and she brushes it away quickly, hoping Katya somehow didn’t see. “I was stupid at the gallery. And I was such a bitch to you when you came. I was so pissed off.”

Katya scoots closer, wraps her arm around Trixie’s shoulders like they’ve known each other for years. “Considering how pissed off you were,” she says, “you were actually pretty decent about that.”

“I can’t believe I’m crying,” Trixie tells her. “I never cry.” But she cries a little more as Katya rubs her back through the blanket, and wonders if she’s about to say this out loud. “And Violet was so pretty.”

“Don’t worry,” Katya tells her. “She knows that.”

Which isn’t what Trixie meant.

“And you’re very gorgeous, Trixie, if you’re fishing for compliments.” Katya still has her arm around her, a band of warmth across her shoulders, and they stay like that until Trixie isn’t sniffling anymore. Katya gets up to bring her some water and she drinks all of it, gulping it like a little kid. “I’m kind of a lightweight,” she says.

“You just needed to cry.”

“I really shouldn’t be drunk around you. Michelle would kill me.”

“As long as you don’t break out the Adderall we’ll be fine.” Katya goes back to the kitchen counter and grabs a lighter. “I’m going to smoke a cigarette out my bedroom window, okay? Be right back.”

There’s a blown-out feeling in the room when she’s gone. Trixie sits and watches the fireplace, thinking that it’s time to put her shoes on, to call a cab, but she doesn’t. She goes to the bathroom in the hall and splashes water on her face. Her reflection in the mirror looks puffy and flushed. _Very gorgeous_ , she thinks. Back in the living room she curls up on the couch, wraps the blanket around her so that only her face is showing and lies there with her head on the armrest.

Katya comes back in. “I just brushed my teeth but I still stink.”

“I’m used to that.”

“Well you look like an orange worm in that blanket. I said what I said.” She comes over and sits down again and Trixie wriggles to make room, feeling lighter, suddenly. “You don’t mind if I stay a bit?”

“It’s all yours.”

“I’m sobering up,” Trixie says, and almost wishes she wouldn’t. She doesn’t want to be embarrassed about any of this later, doesn’t want to feel less brave.

It’s quiet for a bit.

“Come here,” Trixie says.

“What? Cuddle on the couch?” Katya looks down her, very calm. “Is this what we’re doing now?”

Trixie just waits, seeing what will happen. Rain patters against the window.

“Move over,” Katya tells her. “Wait, let me get my pants off.” Trixie squawks and Katya slaps at the blanket as she stands up, saying, “Stop laughing you cow. I just don’t want to sleep in these trousers.” When she’s barelegged and sockless she pads to the hallway in just her white shirt and briefs and flicks the lights off, then comes back and crawls onto the couch. “Give me some of this blanket you’re wearing.”

“Here.” Trixie can’t stop smiling. They shift around for a while until the blanket is over both of them and they lie facing each other. “Lucky I have the biggest couch in the world,” says Katya.

“Brag brag brag.”

They look at each other and the moment stretches out.

“Um,” says Trixie. “You’d better turn over so I can be big spoon.”

Katya watches her for another second. "Okay Trix," she says, and rolls over obediently, pulling Trixie’s arm around her. “You’re the boss.”

. . . .

It’s still dark when Katya touches her arm and says “I have to go to a meeting. Stay as long as you want, okay?”

“But it’s Sunday,” Trixie mutters into her arm. “What meeting.”

“Twelve step.”

Oh. Trixie frowns up at the ceiling, still half-asleep. “Have fun?”

“There are spare toothbrushes under the sink in my bathroom,” she hears Katya say from the door. “The one off of the bedroom, not the hall. Bye.” The door closes.

Trixie sleeps a few more hours, drowsy and hungover. When she gets up the sky outside is overcast and the apartment is flooded with grey light. She looks at her phone, makes tea in Katya’s kitchen because she can’t find any coffee, drinks it and resists the urge to poke around. She has to go through the bedroom to get the toothbrush and Katya's bed looks comfortable, one of those big flat modern beds beneath a tall window. As she brushes her teeth she realizes this is the routine Katya’s hook-ups go through, and that makes her think of Violet. Trixie tries to imagine how she would react if Katya broke things off like that so abruptly. The thought feels dangerous.

“Don’t be a moron,” she tells herself, like she can help it.

She folds the orange blanket, places it on the couch, and makes herself leave.

. . . .

Katya texts her that evening, when she’s back at the studio. _**How’s your head? No complaints?**_

**_I feel like I drank too much and cried on someone’s couch. Which is weird because I would never do that_ **

_**Never say never** _

Trixie wants to respond but she can't. She can’t stop thinking about it.

. . . .

Katya comes to work on Wednesday and bounces around like she usually does, humming and saying random words over and over with increasing enthusiasm. They have to wrap a painting to go into storage, a nine foot wide abstract that’s so heavy the two of them struggle to lift it. Trixie has to use both hands to keep it upright while Katya loops the entire thing in bubble wrap, ducking under Trixie’s arms on each pass. Then Katya holds on to the painting while Trixie does the same with a packing tape gun, squeezing past Katya and trying to keep the tape from catching itself. It’s like some sort of old-fashioned maypole dance where nobody quite touches, and the whole time Katya is describing a movie she watched the night before about a haunted department store or something. It seems impossible that Trixie cried on her couch and they slept curled together in the orange blanket. She’s afraid Katya will mention it, and then a few more hours go by and she wants her to.

That night Trixie gets into bed and replays everything. She remembers Katya holding her foot when she was sad, the way her hair smelled like gum and very faintly of smoke, and how warm her back felt against Trixie’s chest. Katya hadn't slept soundly. She twitched occasionally and muttered things, and it felt good to whisper _it’s okay_ and feel her slip into some better dream. It made Trixie proud.

When did that start? She tries to pinpoint the moment the feeling began but now every word they’ve ever exchanged, every gesture, seems heavy with anticipation. Katya gripping her hand in the crowded gallery and Katya dancing around the studio calling Trixie’s name, and Katya shaking her arm back and forth in the diner because of a stupid joke. And then the red glow of the fireplace and the rain on the window, and obviously by then it was too late. _Is this what we’re doing now_ , Katya asked her, and the possibility cracked open, just a sliver, that maybe it could be.

Only Katya seems exactly the same after what happened. It’s Trixie who’s different.


	4. Alkaline Crimson

By Thursday Trixie is so self-conscious that she can’t even boss Katya around or say mean things to make her laugh. She can hardly talk at all and tries to hide it by wandering from canvas to canvas with a measuring tape, checking numbers she already knows are right. Katya sings under her breath as she covers the worktables in thick brown paper, and laughs when one of the sections she’s taped down comes springing back up, but she quiets down eventually too and everything feels more like work than usual.

“Lunch?” Katya is standing by the door with Trixie’s coat in her hand, holding it out.

“Uh, yeah.” It isn’t a situation that warrants blushing and Trixie takes her time washing her hands at the sink so Katya can’t see her face. It’s probably a mistake to go out somewhere when she’s as tense as this, but eating in the silent library seems worse.

They end up going to a little Chinese place that mostly does take-out, where they sit at a table in the corner. Katya doesn’t talk much, just eats and looks around the restaurant, watching the people come in to pick up their food. When they’re finished eating she takes a free newspaper from a neighbouring table and sits back down to flip through it while Trixie scrolls through apps on her phone, not seeing anything on the screen.

“You’ve got some of that crimson on your cheek,” Katya tells her. “It looks like you’re bleeding.”

Trixie reaches for her napkin but when she sees Katya lick her thumb she freezes, holding her breath. Katya leans over the table and rubs the paint carefully away, then sits back and picks up the paper again. She looks at Trixie over the top of it. “What’s wrong?”

“I feel weird.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Cryptic.” Her eyes go back to the paper.

Trixie shifts in her seat. “Doesn’t anything ever get to you?”

“Meaning?”

“For somebody everyone seems so worried about, you just seem really… steady.”

Katya puts the paper down on the table. “You’ve never seen me fucked up,” she says.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Okay.” She picks up the paper again.

“What?” Trixie can feel her cheeks getting hot. She wants to take the paper out of Katya’s hands. “It’s a compliment.”

“That’s not how it’s coming across.”

“What’s wrong with being steady?”

“No, you’re right.” Katya won’t even look at her. “I'm a paragon of stability.”

“Fine.” Trixie throws her hands up in the air. “You’re a raving maniac. We’re all scared of you.”

“It’s okay, Trixie.” She stands up abruptly, pulls her bag onto her shoulder. “You just don’t know me very well.”

“Right, sorry.” Trixie can’t believe this is happening. “I just _like_ you.”

“Well.” Katya tosses the paper on the table. “Good luck with that.” And she walks out of the restaurant.

. . . .

It takes Trixie a few minutes to charge their lunch to the company card and by the time she gets outside Katya is nowhere in sight. She walks back to work alone, the conversation playing over and over in her head. She needs to nail down exactly why Katya was wrong so she can explain it to her and make things okay again, but all she can think about is how angry Katya got, and how focused she got when she was angry.

An hour passes at the studio without the door chiming, and then another, and as the day stretches out Trixie goes from angry to indignant to devastated. That’s where her mood settles. When she steps outside at three to check if Katya’s car is still there, the parking spot is empty.

. . . .

_**She hates me** _

_**That was fast** _

_**She thinks I’m an idiot because I cried and wallowed all over her giant couch and I don’t understand the dark underworld of metapoetries** _

_**The what?** _

_**Of methamphetamines. Stupid autocorrect. Drugs. And I called her steady** _

_**Wait go back. Does wallowed mean hooking up?** _

_**No** _

_**Are you sure?** _

_**All she did was be nice to me** _

_**Oh no** _

_**Kim** _

_**Yeah** _

_**I want to set myself on fire** _

. . . .

It gets worse. On Friday Katya doesn’t show up at all. Trixie texts Michelle at lunch, feeling like a rat, and Michelle sends back **_She let me know. Back next week I hope._** The _I hope_ is horrible.

The studio is far too large and quiet. “Cavernous,” Trixie whispers to herself, and wishes she hadn’t.

. . . .

**_Kim, what if she’s off the wagon? Or back on it. Whichever one is bad_ **

**_She probably just found you really boring and went to work at Old Navy_ **

Which is supposed to cheer her up.

She thinks about texting Katya but what can she say? Trixie’s never been deft at human sensitivity. She doesn't have a chance with someone who reacts the way Katya did in that restaurant.

She doesn’t cry but she thinks about of the night of the opening when she was starting to, and Katya held her foot.

. . . .

Because time is not actually slowed by human misery she gets through the weekend, and then Monday, then Tuesday. She works on the paintings. She sweeps sand into little piles and sweeps those piles into the dustpan and filters the sand and puts it in a bucket to be poured onto gesso again. She walks to the art store and the woman behind the counter asks her cheerfully where the other girl is.

“Taking a break”, Trixie says.

On Wednesday morning she makes coffee and watches the door. Katya never comes.

She drafts a text: **_I wasn’t daring you to act crazy._** But she deletes it.

She writes: **_I only called you steady because you didn’t seem fazed by me blubbering all over you_**

She deletes that too.

**_Hey anytime you want to talk or_ **

Deletes it.

_**I’m sorry. I was stupid. I hope you’re okay** _

. . . .

The reply comes at 3am, Thursday morning. Trixie only hears the little cricket chirp because she’s already lying awake.

_**You weren’t being stupid, you just weren’t being honest** _

Trixie sits up, typing right away. **_Honest about what?_ **

**_About why you were frustrated_ **

She reads the words over and before she can begin to think of a response there’s another text right away: **_Don’t ask what I mean. I want you to tell me, straight up_**

She bites her lip. _**I’m scared to say the wrong thing** _

**_Be scared and say it anyway_ **

**_I was frustrated._** She hits send and holds perfectly still for what feels like a long time before adding, _ **because you don’t seem like you like me**_

The phone rings, hysterically loud, and she yelps and fumbles to answer it. “Hello?”

“Okay, now you’re in the ballpark.” Katya doesn’t sound angry. If anything she sounds like she’s trying to keep her voice down.

“Why are you whispering?" Trixie's so keyed-up she almost laughs. "Are you calling me from one of those secret prison phones?”

“My parents are asleep.”

“You’re in New York?”

“In the guest room of their apartment.”

“Do they _know?_ ”

“Stop trying to distract me with cute banter.”

Trixie ducks under the covers of her bed, phone to her ear. “I told you,” she says. “I said it already.”

“You don’t think I like you? I’m not buying that.”

“You acted like you hated me at Hon’s.”

“I was annoyed. I wiped paint off your face and you accused me of not having feelings.”

“I didn’t say you didn’t have feelings!” Trixie’s voice sounds squeaky in the darkness. “It’s kind of a big deal for me to cry like that, is all. I don’t do that.”

She hears the flick of a lighter, the sound of Katya inhaling. “Well,” she says, and there’s a distant sound of street traffic as she breathes out. “You’re welcome. I’m glad I could be in the room when you cried.”

“Oh my god. This is why I’m scared to talk to you.”

“You… oh, hold on a sec.” Now there’s another a voice in the background, a woman.

“Yeah, I’m on the phone,” Katya is saying. “No, it’s fine. It’s Ru’s assistant. We’re just… Mom. It’s fine. You can go to bed.” The voice again, something about trust, the words _you didn’t_. “Well tomorrow when I’m still here and I’m not high you’ll know, okay? I’m having this conversation. Okay. Goodnight. No, it’s fine. Love you too.”

Five long seconds go by. She can hear Katya smoking. “Here’s what I think, Trixie. Are you listening?”

“Yeah.”

“I think you wanted to kiss me that night on my couch but you backed off and that’s okay. That makes sense. But then you felt frustrated about backing off and _you_ got weird, not me, and you couldn’t be honest about it so you started talking in code, and I don’t respond well to that. I’ve cried a lot, actually. You have no idea how much. I just don’t do it all in one go because I don’t have the luxury of using booze to help me feel things.”

Trixie pulls the blankets off her head. “But, wait.”

“What?”

“You said you didn’t mind people drinking.”

“I don’t go around _minding_ it, not when people are having fun, but I’m still going to have some emotional reaction to drunk people being upset or drinking because of it. Don’t you?”

“I mean, it was my entire childhood.”

There’s quiet on the line for a second. Then Katya’s voice, softer than before. “Trixie…”

“I don’t want to talk about this now.” Her throat feels tight, like it’s closing up on her.

“Okay, but…”

“Sorry.” She hangs up, sets the phone on the cabinet beside her bed, and pulls a pillow over her face so she can scream.

. . . .

In the morning there’s a text from Katya waiting. **_Let’s talk when I get back if you want? I’ll be there on Thursday_ **

. . . .

Trixie is stripping failed canvasses from their frames. Ru doesn’t like tacks for reasons she's never fully understood, so to strip a canvas she has to loosen each individual staple with the tip of a screwdriver before pulling the metal strand from the wood with a pair of pliers. It’s tedious work and she wants it that way, needs to focus on one small problem at a time. Which is fine until inevitably one of the staples breaks off, leaving a little spike of metal embedded in the frame, and she can’t stand that so she’s digging at the wood with an awl when the door chimes and Katya walks in.

Trixie stands up straight, clutching her awl.

Katya drops her bag on Ru’s chair. “You committing a murder?”

Trixie puts the awl on the table. “Yeah.” She says. 

“Want to talk?”

Trixie nods, pulling off her work gloves.

“I didn’t see Michelle’s car,” Katya comes over to the table. “But I don’t want us to get walked in on. Is there somewhere we can go?”

“You asked me once about the roof.”

“And you said you’d never been up there.”

“But I have the key to the hatch,” Trixie points up at the loft. “In the ceiling.”

Together they maneuver a long steel ladder up the stairs, careful not to scratch the walls, and Katya holds the base to be sure it’s secure as Trixie climbs up first to open the padlock. She pushes the hatch open with both hands and sticks her head into the cold air, and the sky is like smudged charcoal, backlit by the sun that can’t quite burn through. “Careful,” she says as she climbs out. “It’s wet.”

Katya scampers up the ladder easily and pops out behind her, looking around. Katya takes her jacket off and spreads it out so they can sit side by side and look out toward the skyscrapers downtown. “I'm not good at this,” Trixie says.

“Nobody’s good at it.” Katya’s got her legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle. The hood of her black sweatshirt is up and wisps of hair are sticking out around her face. She’s watching Trixie, waiting for her to speak.

It seems impossible.

Trixie looks at the edge of the roof and imagines taking a running leap, but it’s a two-story fall. She’d survive it and be horribly maimed and still have to tell Katya what’s going on, so that option is out. “I did want to kiss you,” she says finally, and makes a face. “Barf.”

“Nice start.”

“If you laugh at me right now I’m locking you up here.”

“I’m not laughing.”

Trixie covers her face with her hands and talks through them. “We went to that lunch with Michelle the day before the opening, remember?”

“I remember.”

“And she was grilling you about your dating life and that got to me, because I don’t have anything like that going on and I haven’t for a long time. Not since Pearl.”

“Stupid ex?”

“Yeah.” She drops her hands to her sides but still refuses to look at Katya. A pair of crows are flying around in circles over the alleyway and she watches them instead.

“Is that why you struggled at the gallery?”

Trixie nods. “Only I didn’t know that was why, at the time. Then Violet was there looking like someone with their own calendar and you were there looking all hot. That was annoying.” Trixie sneaks a glance at her. “I didn’t even think I liked you, I swear. And I feel really crappy about the drinking thing. I just convinced myself it was okay because you seemed fine.”

“It’s not like I didn’t want you there." Katya's voice is gentle now. “I wasn’t trying to imply that you crossed a line or got abusive or anything. I didn’t realize you had any experience with that.”

Trixie watches the crows dip and turn in the air. “Anyway I’m sorry," she says, "and I’m awful about apologies so you know, take that onboard.”

“Thanks.” Katya nudges her shoulder. “I’m sorry I dipped.”

“What _was_ that?” It feels safe to look at her again. “Did I piss you off that badly?”

“I have a thing about passive aggression, and confrontations too.”

“You seem really good at confrontations actually.”

“Maybe in the moment. Afterward it feels like the world’s ending. I got scared. Look, it’s risky for me this whole…” She waves her air in the little gap between them and it makes Trixie’s stomach flip. “I’ve been sober for a couple of years, but I’ve also been unhappy. Or clinically depressed, whatever you want to call it. It got pretty dire, which accounts for all molly-coddling you’ve witnessed. My mother doesn’t want to let me out of her sight but Ru agreed to give me the job and he’s Ru, so that holds a lot of weight with her.” Katya shrugs. “Bob told me I was pulling a geographic but I had to get out of there.”

“Who’s Bob?”

“My sponsor in New York. He’s a drag queen. You’d like him.” She hesitates a second. “He told me to be careful with this.”

“Meaning?” When she doesn’t answer right away Trixie pokes her with her elbow.

“I don’t know how to be with anybody normal."

“ _Normal?_ If I can’t call you steady you can’t call me _normal_. That’s so much worse.”

“A normal relationship then! Settle down a second, would you?” Katya grabs her hand like she’s about to run off somewhere, and hangs onto it. “I’m scared I’d mess this whole thing up.”

“I mean,” Trixie looks down at her hand in Katya’s and wants to say a lot of things, but none of them seem likely to make her less afraid. “It’s risky,” she says. “I get it.”

“Do you?” Katya looks her in the eyes. “Because it isn’t...” But they hear Michelle’s car pulling up below them, alarmingly close, and they have to scramble up and climb back through the hatch, almost leaving Katya’s jacket behind.


	5. Yellow Deep

They manage to get the ladder tucked out of the way before Michelle reaches the loft, and she’s talking on her phone anyway so she only smiles and mouths the word “hi” before going over to her desk. Trixie and Katya go downstairs again and it’s inconceivable that they have to work right now, but they do.

“Did it help? Seeing Bob?” They’re standing side by side at a table, mixing colors.

“My turning up like that worried him. He’s not used to me moping about anyone.”

“You _moped_?” Trixie's so delighted by the idea that she forgets to keep her voice down for a second and glances up at the loft.

“I sulked, I pouted, I rolled around on the floor. Yes I moped.” Katya watches her wrestle with the cap on a tube of oil paint. “How’s that working out for you?”

“I’ve got it.” But the skin of Trixie’s palm is burning. She hands it over. “So does this mean that if we ever did… if anything had happened at your apartment…”

Katya manages to wrench the cap off. “There.”

“Thanks,” Trixie takes it back, squeezes a glob of paint onto her palette.

“If we ever hooked up, what? Would I break it off after a few weeks?”

Trixie scrapes paint up with the palette knife and spreads it again. “Would you?”

“That’s the thing.” Katya picks up a tube of yellow. “No, first of all, but it’s a fair question since my typical romantic interaction is just shallow banter and like, fucking.”

Trixie keeps her eyes on her work. “You don’t push everyone you meet for unconditional honesty at all times?”

“Nope.” Katya squeezes the tube, trying to get the last of the paint out. “Just you.”

“Trixie!” Michelle is coming down the stairs behind them. “Did that package come yet?”

She whirls around to face her. “Not yet.”

Michelle stops where she is, her hand on the banister. “How are your parents, Katya?”

“Oh, fine.” Katya tosses the flattened tube into the trashcan. “My dad’s trying to meet the deadline for his latest book.”

“Novelists shouldn't have deadlines. It’s morbid.” Michelle looks down at the phone in her hand and groans. “I need to drop my car off to get detailed. Katya, could you follow me down there and chauffeur me around the city a bit? I’ll direct you. Trixie can handle the paintings.”

“Sure,” says Katya, wiping her hands on rag. Her eyes dart to Trixie. “No problem.”

. . . .

That night Trixie’s phone rings while she’s loading the dishwasher.

“I talked Bob earlier,” says Katya, “and he thinks, I mean, _we_ think…” She's breathing fast, like she’s walking somewhere. “That boundaries are good idea.”

“Okay,” Trixie says.

“Like work is for work.”

“Katya,” Trixie closes the dishwasher. “I live at work.”

“That’s what I mean about boundaries. They’re already kind of screwy. I just don’t want Michelle to walk in on some sensitive conversation and assume I’m railing you.”

“Uh.” Her mind goes blank. “Right.”

“We can still do stuff when we’re off the clock.”

“Oh wow,” Trixie slides down so that she's sitting on the floor, her back against the kitchen cabinets. “Stuff, okay.”

Katya’s laughs sounds like a little cough. “I mean mature discussions about what we want in life. That kind of stuff.”

“And you’re supposed to be the wild one."

“Am I?” Katya doesn’t wait for her to answer. “Look I’m about to go into a meeting but tomorrow, after work. Let’s play Yahtzee or something.”

. . . .

On Friday Trixie is nervous all day but it’s a different kind of nervous than before. There’s a focus in it now, something to look forward to, and when Michelle finally leaves at four thirty she feels like anything could happen, like Katya could walk over to her and kiss her in the middle of the studio. But at five o’clock there’s a hailstorm that pummels the skylights and they stand in the doorway, looking out at the parking lot. “I was going to say we should get dinner,” Katya says. “But I don’t want to go out in this stuff.”

“Let’s just order something. You want Thai?” Trixie thinks food might settle her nerves. She goes into the library and sits in one of the armchairs, putting the order in on her phone.

Katya taps her fingers on the table restlessly. “I kind of want to smoke out the window.”

Trixie looks up at her. “What happened to boundaries?”

“Damn. You’re right, sorry.”

She looks so chastened that Trixie says, “I’m kidding. Once in a while is fine.”

“I’m doing the gum more.” Katya opens the window.

“I noticed.”

She leans out into the cold air and smokes, and for a while the only sound is the hail turning back into rain.

“You were kind of quiet today,” Trixie says when Katya ducks back inside and closes the window. “Less hooting than usual.”

“I had a skype call with my parents last night.”

“What’d they say?”

“My dad never talks much on calls.” Katya sits sideways in the armchair, facing her. “But my mom is desperate to fly over and renovate my apartment. She loves renovating.” She makes a face, then adds quickly, “which is fine.”

“Not if you don’t want her to.”

“I really, really don’t want her to. She’d be coming and going for ages, wanting to check on me every day. I can’t blame her for not trusting me but it doesn’t help me trust myself, you know?”

Trixie tries to imagine anyone coming into her life and moving her stuff around. “Did you tell her that?”

“Yeah I did. She was pissed off, which… I hate when she’s mad with me. I was raised in a hotbed of people being quietly upset.” Her expression changes and she leans forward slightly. “Hey, will you tell me if it bothers you when I bitch about my family? Because I can reel it in. I know how lucky I am that they even care.”

“I don’t mind.” Trixie shrugs. “There are different kinds of bad time, that’s all.”

“True.”

The silence feels heavy and Trixie studies the nails of her left hand, picking at a bit of yellow paint. “But I don’t want to talk about my kind,” she says.

“You don’t have to.”

Trixie meets her eyes again. "Okay."

When the food comes they arrange it on the table and sit facing each other. Katya asks about art school and Trixie talks about her scholarship, about moving to Chicago and meeting Kim and rooming together, how she met Pearl at a rooftop party in Lincoln Park.

“Her family’s from here so she wanted to come back for a year or so and work at her friend’s cafe and take pictures. It was dumb of me to follow her but she was my first real girlfriend.” She finds it easier to talk about this when there’s food to concentrate on, something to do with her hands. “I didn’t want to be left behind.”

“You’re really brave.”

Trixie takes a sip from her can of Perrier. “Are you even listening?”

“No, I mean it,” Katya says, sitting back in her chair. “One of the hardest things I’ve ever done is come out here by myself and I had a job lined up and a fancy sterile apartment and an army of people waiting on pins and needles to rescue me if I fucked up.” She picks up her chopsticks again, about to take another bite of vermicelli. “You have no idea how much I wish I’d made it to this place on my own steam.”

“But look at you now,” Trixie says. “Using utensils and everything.”

Katya takes her bite, holds Trixie's gaze as she chews and swallows. “You’re such a bitch."

“I’m fully aware.”

“I probably shouldn’t like it this much.”

“Well,” Trixie pushes her plate to the side. “I might be overcompensating because I’m terrified of human contact. Ask your therapist.”

Katya stands up to start clearing the food away. “Get your own.”

They clean up without talking much. Katya rinses out the little plastic sauce containers at the sink, her foot tapping on the ground to some rhythm in her head, and Trixie watches her.

“Hey Katya?”

“Yeah?”

“You're brave too."

Katya looks at her, surprised. Neither of them knows what to do with it. Finally Trixie says, “You want to see my room?”

“I’ve always wanted to see your room.” Katya shuts the water off and wipes her hands on her jeans and maybe it’s Trixie’s imagination but her cheeks look a bit pink.

“Is that a yes?”

“Show me.”

So Trixie opens the door and takes her through the narrow hall, past the little tiled bathroom and into the bedroom. She made it extra tidy that morning, left the lamp on in the corner, and she knows it looks cozy and welcoming.

“This is like The Borrowers,” Katya says right away.

Trixie sits on her bed. “What is that, your scrappy gang of thieves?”

“A set of kid’s books I used to love.” Katya is turning in circles, looking at everything. “These tiny people live in the cracks of walls and everything they have they stole from humans.” She catches Trixie’s expression and laughs. “No! It’s really cool! They make little furniture out of matchbooks and spools of thread…”

Trixie reaches for a cushion, holds it up like she’s going to throw it at her.

“Because this is so hidden! That’s all. You’d never know you were living here. This room has three thousand times more character than any of Ru’s fancy stuff.” She goes over to the rack of dresses. “Look at this. This is insane.” Katya holds up a sleeve with a sixties flower pattern, looking over at her. “How come you never wear these?”

“Anything I wear gets covered in gesso within a day.”

“But to the opening, I mean. Not that you didn’t look hot in Margaret Howell or whatever but these are amazing. I’d die if I saw you in this stuff.”

"I guess I don’t really want the attention.”

“Yeah.” Katya drops the sleeve reluctantly. “They’re great though. I guess there aren’t any of your paintings lying around that you’d let me see?”

“Sure and maybe you’ve got some writing here that you’d like to read aloud. I'll critique it.”

“Nope.” Katya goes over to the crate of records and sits down on Trixie’s rug to poke through them, tugging up each album to see the cover before sliding it back down. She’s leaning forward so Trixie can’t see her face when she says, “Writing for me is kind of complicated.”

“Complicated how?”

“When I was younger it came really easily and everyone made a big fuss, probably because of who my dad is. I mean,” she stops, corrects herself. “I had some talent, I just wasn’t a world-beater. Big surprise there.” She examines a few more albums without speaking. “It was fine, actually, but fine felt humiliating, as dumb as that sounds. Oh, this one.” She pulls out a Kate Bush album and holds it in her lap, looking down at it. “This was the year I turned nineteen.”

“In 1985? That tracks.”

“I _listened_ to it when I was nineteen, all the time.” Katya looks over at her. “You’re one of those people who actually remembers dates?”

“Only for really good albums. I’ll struggle to remember your birthday, I promise.”

“Well that makes me feel better.” She holds the record up. “Can I play this?”

Trixie nods. As Katya scoots over to the little turntable Trixie gets onto her stomach on the bed, propping herself on her elbows so they’re at the same level. “So you just stopped?”

Katya switches the rpm and drops the needle, then adjusts the volume, keeping it low. “I mean I broke my brain first, on drugs and misery, so that probably didn’t help.”

“Maybe it would help. Maybe it’s good to be a Martian.”

Katya groans, acknowledging the reference. She lies back on the rug looking upward. “A lot of the time I wish I’d never tried,” she says. “I wish I’d never won that little contest, never swaggered through my writing classes, never knew how it felt to have the right line drop into the right place at the end of a story. I wouldn’t feel so let down by how it all played out.”

Trixie pulls herself to the edge of the bed and peers over at her. “Katya,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“You can see my paintings if you want.”

Without waiting to hear the answer she gets up and goes to the closet, finds the large archival box and brings it back to the bed. Katya comes and sits on the quilt facing her, the box between them. The first portrait Trixie pulls out is one of Pearl. It’s a three-quarter profile with a single light source that Pearl actually sat for in Chicago. Her expression is characteristically sleepy and mildly amused, her short hair tousled. Katya takes it in her hands and Trixie says, “It’s not like I’m happy with these, but anyway.”

Katya looks up at her. “Is this supposed to make me feel better?” She’s smiling. “Holy shit, Trixie. This is amazing. Ru Paul could never.”

“I mean,” Trixie shakes her head. “He wouldn’t want to.”

“Is this Pearl?”

“Yeah. Most of them are of her.” She pulls out a few more and hands them over. “I did one of my friend Kim that I actually liked but that was a gift so she has it. There is _one_ self-portrait too, before you ask, but I made myself too sexy. I hate looking at it.”

“Gimmie,” Katya makes grabby hands until Trixie finds it and hands it over.

“Nah,” Katya says. She holds it up at arm’s length and stares at it critically. “You’re sexier than this.”

“Look how pouty I made my lips though.” Trixie points at them. “And I straightened my nose.”

Katya hands it back. “You need to give yourself more credit.”

“I mean,” Trixie tucks the self-portrait back into the box where it can’t peek out at them. “Look who’s talking.”

“Ugh.” Katya wrinkles her nose. “Let’s play who’s smarter and better forever.”

“I am.” Trixie says right away.

“That’s not…” Katya laughs. “You’ve misunderstood the game.”

Trixie’s putting the last of the portraits back into the box when Katya reaches across the bed and touches her wrist. “Thanks for showing me,” she says.

Trixie looks at her, and it takes all of her courage to say it. “Is this how it’s going to be?” 

Katya pulls her hand back slightly. “What do you mean?”

“Like we’re not allowed to make out because of boundaries but every forty-eight hours you touch me and it’s like a gong goes off.”

“A gong,” Katya says quietly. “I like that.”

“Well I find it kind of excruciating.” Trixie gets up and puts the box away, shoving it into its corner, then comes back and sits down on the edge of the bed. “Not that I want you to stop.”

“I'm just trying to follow direction,” Katya says. “I could tell you how much I'd rather not, but that wouldn’t help either of us.” She gets up from the bed. “I should probably go, actually.”

“Don’t,” says Trixie. “That’s not what I meant. I don’t want you to.”

“I know. Come on." Katya holds her hand out. “Walk me to the door like a lady.”

So there’s nothing else to do. Trixie lets herself be pulled up and they go out into the library and cross the studio that way, hand in hand. At the coat chair Trixie lets go of her so Katya can put her jacket on. Katya tugs at her collar where it’s folded inward and says, “You really want to take a chance on this?”

“What do you mean by this?”

“On a messed up thirty-four-year-old recovering addict, this whole pulling-my-act-together vibe, the endless whodunnit of…”

“Katya,” Trixie cuts her off. “When you were gone it felt like this whole place was made of rotten wood.”

Katya smiles and she looks sad, all at once. She reaches for Trixie’s hand again and interlaces their fingers. “This is me trying to hang around.”

“By leaving right this second.”

“Exactly,” she nods. “Now I’m going to hug you so you won’t be mad at me.”

“I’ll be mad anyway,” Trixie mutters, but Katya steps into her and pulls her close and she doesn’t resist. It's been a long time since she let herself be held by anyone. She rests her chin on Katya’s shoulder, not fully committing to it, but she can feel the warmth of Katya's hand where it's cupping the back of her neck and Trixie closes her eyes, lets out a slow breath. “What are you doing to me," she says.

Katya only has to turn her head slightly for her mouth to be at Trixie’s ear. “I just really really really really like you,” she says softly. “Okay?”

Trixie gives in and wraps her arms around her. “Okay,” she whispers.

For a few seconds they stay like that and then, too soon, Katya is stepping away. “Next time we should break out of here,” she says. “Right?” She’s moving toward the door.

“Careful driving,” Trixie calls after her. “In the rain. The hail, earlier!” Grammar is failing her. She lifts her hand. “Bye.”

Katya opens the door and the alarm chimes, and she looks back one more time before stepping out into the darkness. “Bye Trix,” she says, and then she’s gone and there’s only the rain on the skylights and the faint sound of the record playing in the other room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm @westofklovharun on tumblr. Comments are life.


	6. Veronese Green

Ru turns up that Monday morning determined to start a new series. It isn’t artistic inspiration that strikes him first, Trixie knows by now, but the knowledge that a gallery somewhere will put a massive price tag on a fresh set of his paintings. Still, once he starts getting ideas he becomes exacting, hyper-focused. He likes to see how his latest compositions look in real space before any paint is on the canvas and he waits in the middle of the studio with barely-veiled impatience as she sets up the projector.

“Next” he says and Trixie brings up the second file. “See that green?" He points to it. "You should sample it from the Picabia I showed you.”

“Right.” She makes a note on her tablet.

“Alright. This is looks fine.” He walks through the projection to get to the stairs, patterned for an instant with his own design, then turns and faces her again. “You’ll start painting today?"

“I will,” she says. Ru doesn’t blink much when he wants you to do something and it took Trixie a while to get used to that. She used to feel like she was the only participant in some terrifying contest he was judging, like any small mistake would get her sent home on the spot. Now every exchange they have is routine. She knows he’ll go up to the loft for the rest of the morning so she can get to work, and he does. 

She peels back the paper on a wax pencil and reminds herself that it’s only Monday. She still has to get through tomorrow before Katya comes again. 

It stings a little when she remembers how quickly Katya got up from her bed and left, but the thought of the hug is comforting, and Trixie thinks about the hug a lot. She remembers what Katya said in her ear too, and every time she does she wants to text her but she's afraid of scaring her off again. Over the weekend she kept it to a few light exchanges, Katya replying the same way, and it didn’t amount to anything except a kind of checking in. Like, _I'm still here. Don't forget me._

She gets up on a stepladder and starts outlining the composition with a little sigh. At least now they’ll have work to talk about.

. . . .

_**Ru was on fire today** _

It’s past five and the studio is empty. Within ten seconds of Trixie sending the text her phone rings in her hand.

“Did he run around flapping his arms and trying to put it out?”

Trixie smiles. “Prepare yourself for Wednesday, is all I’m saying.” Hearing Katya’s voice makes her feel shy suddenly, in the open studio, and she goes into the library, heading for her room. “You’re about to see full manifestation mode.”

“Believe me, I’ve seen that that mode.” There’s a crunch like Katya is biting into something.

“Are you eating chips? On the phone?”

“Cornichons. Little pickles.”

“Okay fancy. I know what cornichons are.” She’s in her own hallway now, the door closed behind her.

“Ru was always like that,” Katya says, switching the topic back. “He’s big on manifesting his own destiny. Why do you think he spent any time with me when I was a kid?”

“Um.” Trixie sits down on her bed. “Destiny’s… child?”

“You really sold that. Thank you.”

Trixie covers her face with her hand.

“No see,” There’s another little crunch. “My dad’s third novel was blowing up back when Ru was still a starving artist. He was networking.”

“Well.” Trixie bends over, unlacing her shoes. “That ruins my cozy mental image of you two playing Monopoly and listening to Burt Bacharach all day.”

“Ru actually loves Burt Bacharach.”

“I know.” She toes her shoes off one by one and swings her feet up onto the bed. “Don’t act like you’re special for knowing that.”

“Don’t act like you don’t think I’m special.”

Trixie can feel her cheeks getting warm. “I’m glad you don’t insist on facetime, at least.”

“Why? You making faces?”

“No! Just, most people like it.”

“Well I find it distracting. And not the good, you-in-front-of-me-in-physical-reality kind of distracting. Plus I like guessing what you’re up to.”

Trixie is leaning back against her pillows, pulling aimlessly at the toe of her sock. She stops, sits up a little straighter. “Guess, then.”

“You’re in bed, or at least you’re on your bed.”

“Well it’s not like I have a living room set crammed in here.” She notices a streak of color on her thumb and scratches at it. “I don’t lounge around on the floor like some people.”

“You’re in your work clothes but the smock is off.”

“I don’t wear the smock in my free time, you are correct.”

“You probably still have some paint on your hands somewhere.”

Trixie tucks her thumb under her leg. “These are all obvious.”

“And you have no idea how good you look.”

“That’s not a real guess.”

“And you’re blushing.”

She rolls onto her side, pushes her face into the pillow for a second. When she lifts her head again Katya is saying “How’d I do?”

“Terrible.”

“So what _are_ you doing then?”

“I’m on the roof. In an evening gown. And I’ve never blushed in my life.”

There’s a little pause, and Trixie wants to keep Katya on the phone longer but doesn’t want to feel like she’s keeping her on the phone. “And now I’m going to go have a shower,” she says.

“M’kay.” The crunching resumes. “Call me tomorrow?”

“Alright.” She nods, even though Katya can’t see it. “I will.”

. . . .

Michelle corners her in the kitchen first thing in the morning, while Trixie is taking a carton of milk out of the fridge. “How would you say Katya is doing? From your perspective, I mean.”

Trixie straightens up slowly. The thought that Michelle might know something about her and Katya makes her brain sputter to a stop.

“That trip to New York seemed a little abrupt,” Michelle adds. “Her mother’s worried.”

Right, New York. Trixie pours milk into her cup, careful not to spill. “She said she wanted to reconnect with her old support system.” Even saying that much feels like a betrayal, but it won’t do Katya any favors to be mysterious. “I think she’s doing okay.”

Michelle leans against the counter, watching her mix her coffee. “It’s so hard,” she says, “Moving to a new city with no relationships. I had hopes for that model, Violet? She seemed to be at Katya’s level.”

“Hm.”

“Well I’m sure she’s still meeting lots of new people. She’s never been shy. Anyway,” she pushes off the counter, apparently reassured. “We’re pushing to get photos of the new series out faster than usual, especially now that there’s two of you. Hope you’re both ready to work!”

“Yeah,” Trixie says, and lets herself breathe. “That’s no problem.”

. . . .

The worst thing about having Ru in the studio while Trixie works is that she’s expected to catch whatever he might say at any moment, even though hours go by without him saying anything. She wishes she could play music or put a podcast on. When there’s no background noise, no Katya there singing or talking, there’s too much time to think.

Ru and Michelle go out for lunch and she’s left in the library alone. Her phone chirps with a photo from Kim. It’s a cake she’s decorated.

**_What’s the cake for?_ **

**_I like cake._**

**_Okay. Seems fair._** She hesitates a second, then types more. _**Is it weird and possessive to wonder if someone I’m not even dating is dating other people?**_

_**This again?** _

_**What?? This is a brand new question** _

_**I told you this before. Nobody thinks you’re possessive. Pearl only ever called you that because she got caught messing around** _

Trixie puts the phone down on the table. The studio is so quiet that she can hear the clock ticking in the upstairs office.

Another text from Kim: **_It’s actually been a while since I’ve had to remind you that Pearl was an idiot and you’re better off. This Katya obsession has been good for that. Now let me be alone with my cake_**

. . . .

“Michelle was snooping around today on behalf of your mom,” Trixie says when Katya picks up the phone. It’s colder than usual tonight and she’s gotten into bed with her clothes on, pulled the quilt up to her chest.

“I expected that.” Katya doesn’t sound bothered by it. “They talk sometimes.”

“Well I lied and said you’re good at your job, so.”

“You do that a lot, I’ve noticed.”

“Got to keep the emperor’s clothes, uh, clean. However that story goes.”

“The emperor was naked, Trixie.”

“Got to keep you naked.” She winces.

“Nice.”

Trixie has to think of the next thing to say, quickly. “Is your apartment as freezing as the studio right now? I just cranked the heat up in my room.”

“My apartment is always perfectly temperate, as you know. I’ve actually got the fireplace on.”

“Wow. Decadent.” Trixie pictures it, the big dark windows and the red glow against the walls, and she wants so badly to be on Katya’s couch again that it makes her reckless. “Michelle was asking about Violet too, wondering if you ever hear from her."

“If Violet knew Michelle Visage was asking about her she’d turn up at the studio tomorrow morning." There's a little pause. "But no. We haven’t been talking.”

Trixie wiggles her feet under the covers. “Well I won’t mention that to Michelle unless she corners me again. I don’t want to encourage her.”

“Like she’s ever needed encouragement. Hold on I need to stretch.” Katya makes a little sound as she stretches that makes Trixie’s eyes go wide, and continues, “but I do appreciate that Michelle cares, in her way. I can’t fault her enthusiasm about people, you know?”

Trixie switches the phone from one ear to the other so she can curl up on her side. “Michelle trained me when I started here. I didn’t mind when she started giving me advice about real estate and stuff, no matter how out of touch it was. I took it as a sign she was invested in me, even a little.”

“She’s got serious mom energy for sure.”

“I’m not used to that," she says, and then, to fill the space, "but Michelle deals with Ru better than anyone so that helps a lot. I can’t imagine if I started working here and it was just him.”

“I can’t imagine him running his own studio. Doing what you do, I mean. The day to day of it.”

“You’re not intimidated by him at all, are you?”

“I’m more horrified by the responsibility of everything. The first day I was there I couldn’t believe they’d let me near those expensive-ass paintings.”

“Neither could I.”

“It wasn’t until I started working on them that the reverence kind of fizzled.”

“And now I pick your hair out of the paint all day.”

“Gotta make my mark somehow. Hey.”

“Hey what?”

“Did looking at your portraits the other day make you want to paint again?”

“Um.” Painting was the last thing on Trixie’s mind that night, which is probably not the thing to say out loud. “Maybe. I doubt I’ll have time for a while though.”

There’s a little break in the connection. “Ugh, one sec.” Katya groans. “My mom is calling. This might take a while.”

“It’s okay,” Trixie tries to sound like she doesn't mind. “I’ll see you tomorrow anyway.”

. . . .

The feeling in the studio is different when there’s a deadline. Ru changes his mind about things overnight, throws out color schemes and makes significant alterations and wants see them on a canvas by the following afternoon. It’s unpredictable and Trixie isn’t sure how Katya will react to that kind of atmosphere, but when she comes in on Wednesday she doesn’t look anxious at all. She sees Trixie and waves both her hands like an excited kid, smiling, and it’s so cute that Trixie has to look down at the brush she’s trimming or she’ll say something she shouldn't. Ru is standing by the projector and Katya says “hi Ru” to him.

He gives her a surprised nod, like he’d forgotten she existed but doesn't mind recalling it. “Lots of work to do," he says.

“You can start on 602,” Trixie tells her, and Katya gets to work while Ru goes upstairs to take a call.

After a half hour has gone by Katya announces that she’s re-naming the painting. “Are you ready to meet her?”

“I don’t know, am I?”

“This is Flop,” Katya says, gesturing at the canvas like a game show presenter. “Otherwise known as Lil’ Flop."

“Little? It’s nine feet tall.”

“That’s the twist.” Katya strokes the edge of the canvas with the tip of her finger and smiles at Trixie, like they’re sharing a secret. “That’s what makes her shine.”

“Shine on Lil’ Flop.” And Katya bursts out laughing at that, so it’s worth it. Trixie’s long past resisting all the nicknames and random phrases Katya comes up with. She finds her delight in things catching. She knows she has to stay focused with such a tight deadline but Katya will start with some ridiculous topic and they’ll laugh until she can hardly hold onto her brush. Even when Michelle comes down and says on her way out the door that in her opinion the painting Trixie's working on is much _much_ too green, it’s hard to keep from smiling.

For lunch they decide on the Mexican place a few blocks away and they walk there together, past the breweries and automotive supply shops. Trixie is trying to describe the elimination process that decides which paintings will make a series. “Imagine a reality show,” she says. “Like America’s Next Top Model, remember? But the models are paintings and Ru is Tyra Banks. It’s a whole dramatic…” But Katya is already groaning at the idea of Ru as Tyra Banks and Trixie jerks her arm impatiently. “No listen! He stands there with Michelle on one side and me on the other but we never speak, not unless he asks a question. Then he judges each painting and says something quippy or cutting about it, depending on his mood, and there’s this palpable tension while you wait to hear which ones will move on and then,” she grips Katya’s elbow, her voice going high, “you feel _sorry_ for the one that doesn’t.”

“Is this that thing where every tiny event in a workplace becomes magnified and incredibly dramatic?” They’ve come to the restaurant and Katya is holding the door open for Trixie to go through. “Because I’ve never been employed long enough to experience that.”

“Oh, you’ll experience it,” Trixie says. They pick a table by the window. “I’m telling you ahead of time so you don’t lose your mind.”

“He’s always had that flair.” Katya glances through the menu and puts it aside. “Ru used to dress up in my mom’s clothes when I was little.”

“Really?” Trixie imagines that. “He probably looked great.”

“He did,” Katya says, like it's a personal regret of hers. “He looked fantastic.”

“Do you have pictures? Not of Ru dressed up, I mean, but of you together? Back then?”

Katya reaches for her phone. “My mom sent me one of her favorites a couple of nights ago.” She hands it over and Trixie looks down at a little blond girl with a bowl cut, seated on a couch beside a younger, but somehow nearly identical, Ru Paul. “We’re watching Night Court,” Katya says.

“Oh right.” Trixie has no idea what that is.

Katya pours them water from the carafe on the table and slides Trixie's glass across to her. “You’d better believe when Ru got famous my mum dug that photo up and put it on the grand piano.”

“Your parents have a _grand_ piano?” Trixie puts the phone down. “In Manhattan? Does it have its own apartment?”

“It has one of the spare bedrooms."

Katya takes a drink of water, glancing out the window, and Trixie has the opportunity to just look at her for a second. Her hair is long enough that she can scrape it into a short ponytail and the strands she didn't catch are hanging down her neck. She's wearing a thin black sweater and with her tattoos covered she looks less intimidating than when the weather was warmer. She catches Trixie looking and smiles. 

"So.” Trixie says. "Were you always rich? Growing up?"

Katya doesn't act like it's a rude question. “I can remember money being an issue when I was little, but nothing major. We moved into a smaller places a few times.” She has her hand on the table and taps it with her fingers, once and then again, like she’s sounding for something. “By the time I was thirteen some movie rights got sold and I was sent to a private school full of rich girls.”

“And you were one of them?”

“Not by their standard.”

Every image in Trixie's head is culled from movies, girls with snobby expressions in kilts and blazers. “Were you popular?”

“I got a pass for the wrong reasons.” She takes a sip of water. “Adjacent fame. Being skinny. Being white. What about you?"

Trixie thinks of sitting in the high school library when everyone else had gone home, not wanting to leave. “All I did was study and sketch.”

The server comes by to order their food and Katya jokes easily with him about the menu. He looks half in love with her by the time he goes back into the kitchen.

Trixie doesn't want to talk about high school anymore. “Do you get along with your dad?”

“We’re fine.” She says it like it’s something she’s resigned to. “He’s really quiet. He can be interviewed in front of hundreds of people and he’s great but sit down with him like this and he wouldn’t know what to say.”

“My mom will say anything to anybody.” Trixie looks out the window at a passing bus. It fills their view for an instant and then it's gone. “She doesn’t care what happens.”

“Do you talk to her at all?”

“I call her sometimes. Maybe once or twice a year. We’re better off that way.”

“Right,” Katya says, and it’s less like she agrees and more like she understands why someone might say it. “Did you ever consider therapy?”

“Not with her.”

“I mean for you.”

“Not really. Why?”

“Everyone I’ve ever met would benefit from some, that’s all.”

“So not a direct judgement on my mental state, then.”

“It’s a broad stance,” Katya says. “For the general population.”

“Very convincing.”

The server comes with two Mexican sodas and Trixie sticks a straw into hers. “Do you tell your therapist about me?”

Katya shakes her head slightly. “I can’t do all that.”

“All what?” It scares her, for some reason. “Which part?”

“I have to know that it stays private, what I say there. I can’t feel like anything is leaking out into the real world or I won't be able to do it.”

“Oh.” She feels stupid for asking. “That makes sense.”

“Look,” Katya leans forward in her chair, resting her elbows on the table. “The only rule of psychotherapy is that I say whatever pops into my head without censoring anything, so read into that what you will.”

Trixie plays with her straw, mulling that over. “So you go in there and say ‘flop’ over and over.”

“Believe me.” Katya grins. “It’s a rich tapestry.”

The idea that that her name has come out of Katya's mouth in a quiet room somewhere is something Trixie knows she'll come back to, one of those things she can reach for when she's feeling impatient or lonely. The server comes back with their tacos and Katya hands her a wedge of lime like it's a little prize, a celebration of the distance they've traveled in one conversation. Trixie accidentally sprays hot sauce on the table and they give on trying to eat politely, which is impossible anyway, and it feels so easy, eating and laughing together. When they’re done Katya wipes her hands with a napkin and Trixie takes a sip of her drink and holds Katya’s gaze, keeping her mouth on the straw a little longer than necessary,

Katya just watches her.

"What?" Trixie asks. 

"You know what."

"I'm simply enjoying my beverage and maintaining eye contact with a co-worker."

“And I’m going to the bathroom." But Katya doesn’t get up right away. Then she gets up a little too quickly and jostles the table and it’s hard to know if she’s actually flustered or just being Katya but it feels good, like they’re out together on a date and they don’t have to go back to the studio now and paint for hours with Ru in the loft upstairs.

The server comes by with the cheque and Trixie uses the company card. Then Katya’s phone buzzes near her glass and as Trixie goes to push it back across the table she sees the Tinder notification.

**_Saturday was interesting. U free this weekend?_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love comments. And feel free to yell at me for the way this chapter ends @westofklovharun on tumblr.


	7. Napthol Scarlet

She has two choices, wait for Katya to come back from the bathroom and say something or let the phone screen go black and act like she never saw it. Either way they have to return to the studio together and work side by side. The deadline for the paintings is Friday at five o'clock, a span of time that seemed absurdly brief just a minute ago. Now it feels like forever.

Katya comes back and sits down again and Trixie studies the receipt to avoid looking at her. If she can't seem like reasonably normal person she'll have no options at all so she stands up, pulling her coat on. "We should get back."

Katya jumps up, taking her jacket off the back of her chair, and follows Trixie out.

As they walk back Trixie can't think of how to fill the silence. She can feel Katya noticing.

“Are you stressed about the deadline?”

"Yeah." Trixie keeps looking straight ahead. “Four paintings in a week is crazy, even with two people."

“Don’t be stressed. We’ll get it done.”

In the studio again Katya names the three other pieces one by one - Tabitha, Bestie, and Frederica Bimmel - before settling in and working hard. When Trixie is especially quiet Katya asks questions about the art world that aren't hard to answer, like she's trying to help her relax. Trixie gives the right answers. She mixes colors, paints, checks her tablet, and the whole time she's thinking about Saturday night, how she spent it alone in her bedroom while Katya was making somebody else want to see her again.

"Are you using the mineral spirits?"

Trixie looks down at her hand and realizes she's holding the bottle. "No," she says, and puts it on the table.

Katya takes the bottle and tips a few drops onto her palette. "It must be hard to keep all this in your head."

"Yeah." She tries to remember how she normally acts. "I mean it's not. For me."

"Pretty impressive stuff," Katya says, and Trixie wonders how her face would change if Saturday came up now.

She goes back to painting. Work is for work, they agreed, Plus Michelle and Ru keep coming and going, and what would she say? No rules have been broken. It shouldn't hurt the way it does.

. . . . 

"See you tomorrow," Katya says from the door at five, and Trixie looks back over her shoulder from where she's washing her hands at the sink. "Ok bye."

As soon as the door shuts goes into her room and texts Kim.

_**I saw Katya’s phone. She’s hooking up with other people** _

_**I thought she was into you** _

Usually she likes Kim's bluntness. Now it makes her want to fold inward and disappear. 

_**She said she was.** _

_**Did you talk to her about it?** _

_**I can’t. She already thinks I need therapy** _

_**You do! Just talk to her** _

**_After we finish this series I might._ **

As if by then, Trixie thinks, she'll have right words. As if she won't feel so stupid.

. . . .

It's Thursday afternoon and they’re alone in the studio. Katya’s perched on a stool, filling in a section of Tabitha and going on and on about Julia Roberts, who she inexplicably worships. Trixie is nodding, pretending to listen, when she glances down at the image on her tablet and freezes. “Katya, stop.”

“Just watch it!” She’s smiling, her eyes on the tip of her brush. “Watch that goddamn movie and you’ll get exactly what I’m talking about.”

“No," she comes forward. "Stop painting.”

Katya lowers the brush and Trixie holds up the tablet. “Is that the right colour? Shouldn't it be Pale Yellow?”

Katya looks at the screen. “But it…” She reaches for a piece of paper on the floor. “I have it printed out.” She tries to hand it to Trixie.

"That's from Monday."

Katya sits there staring at the image on the paper like she can make it right if she looks long enough. “Oh fuck,” she says quietly. "You're right." She gets up and rushes to the table, starts picking through the pile of rags, looking for a clean one. "Fuck," she says again under her breath. "Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck."

“Which red did you use?”

Katya grabs the notebook where they keep the formulas written down and flips the pages quickly. “Gamblin,” she reads aloud. “Napthol Scarlet, Mars Black.” She looks at Trixie. “Does Gamblin dry fast?”

“It’s not the worst.” She doesn’t want to say how bad it is. “We need to rub it back.”

So they wipe the section with rags to try and get the paint off, taking turns when their wrists get sore, but the red is a wet stain that comes off on their fingers. “We won’t be able to cover it,” Trixie says. “It’ll bleed through again and again.”

Katya is gnawing her lower lip. “Can we at least try?”

“Maybe tomorrow morning.”

“What about a solvent?”

“I’m using one.” Trixie holds up her rag. “Anything stronger would affect the texture or worse. We’d have to throw the whole thing out and start over.”

Katya goes over to the stool and sits down, hunched forward like her stomach hurts. “Well,” she says, “it was bound to happen sooner or later.”

“It’s not the worst mistake.” Trixie can’t think of a worse one at the moment. “And sometimes Ru changes his mind about what he wants.”

“I was having too much fun," Katya says. “I got too comfortable." She holds her head in her hands. "I named it _Tabitha_.”

“Let’s just keep going on the rest,” Trixie tells her. “Ru will come in tomorrow to look at them and we’ll see what he says. He might not even notice.” But she knows he will because time is a factor. It wouldn’t be the first time Ru scrapped a whole painting at the last minute and made her cut the canvas into little pieces so nobody can salvage it, but it’s always been his decision.

Katya hasn't moved. “Sorry Trix.”

“Hey,” she says, so Katya will look at her. “I don’t mind, seriously. I’ve done the same thing a few times and got lucky covering it up. You’ll feel better once he sees it, even if he freaks out, which isn’t generally his thing.”

“Yeah, he just stares you down until you cry. I remember.” She looks like she’s on the verge of tears now and Trixie wants to go over and crouch in front of her, find something to say to make this better, but Michelle might come in at any moment. 

“Let’s keep going,” she says.

. . . .

They’ve finished Bestie and are closing in on Frederica when Katya has to leave. “Thanks,” she tells Trixie, pulling on her coat. 

“Don't worry. It'll be okay.”

Katya looks like she doesn’t believe it for a second. “I’ll come early tomorrow."

After she's gone Trixie gathers the stained rags from the floor and heaps them into the metal bin. She feels sorry for Katya and anxious about tomorrow but it doesn't keep the words _Saturday was interesting_ from running through her head. Saturday was the night after Katya looked at her portraits, after she hugged her and said what she said in Trixie's ear and it felt like the beginning of something.

It's hard to let go of that, but mistakes happen. 

Three times in the night she gets out of bed to check if the stain is drying. Her finger comes away red every time.

. . . .

Katya arrives early the next day morning, looking like she hasn’t slept at all. They try to cover the section with the proper pale yellow but it’s no use. The best they can get is a deep marigold that turns darker at the edges.

“He’ll probably just go with a different color,” says Trixie. She glances at the loft where Michelle is working, grateful she doesn't follow the process closely enough to catch on to what’s happening.

“But a different color will change everything."

“It'll be fine, okay? Let me handle it.” Trixie nods at the sink across the room. “I need you to wash those brushes.”

Katya goes over to the sink without another word.

When Ru comes in Trixie gets to him as soon as he drapes his coat across the chair. “There’s a problem with Tab…” She clears her throat awkwardly. “With number 604.”

His eyebrows go up. “And what’s the problem?”

Trixie sneaks a glance at Katya, who’s got the tap running at the sink. “I got the current version mixed up with a previous mock-up,” she says. “I painted the yellow section red.”

“Well well.” Ru does this thing when he's presented with something he doesn’t like. His face goes blank and his voice gets extra perky at the same time. “Let’s take a look."

She takes him over to the painting and he surveys the damage without speaking.

“It should dry in two days,” she says. “Possibly sooner. Then I can go over it properly. I’m sorry about the delay.” He’s standing there, waiting, and she feels like she has to keep talking. “I let myself get distracted. I don’t know how, I just… It was stupid of me.”

“Trixie,” He clasps his hands behind his back, looking down at her. “You need to stop listening to that voice in your head that says you can’t succeed. Do you know what that voice is?”

She waits.

“It’s your inner saboteur.”

Trixie nods slowly, trying to look as if she hasn't heard him say it before. If Ru makes makes this a teaching moment then he might not mind as much about Tabitha, but before he can continue she sees Katya walking over to them. There’s no way to warn her.

“Sorry Ru,” Katya says. “I messed up.”

Ru's gaze moves from Katya to Trixie and back again for a length of time that feels theatrical. “Now I’m confused,” he says finally. “Which one of you made the mistake?”

Katya looks at Trixie. “I did,” she says, like she's just catching up. Then, more firmly, “It was me.”

“It doesn’t matter." Trixie keeps her eyes on Ru. “It was my responsibility.”

“Looks like you two need to get your stories straight." His face is stern, but something makes Trixie think he’s relishing their little drama. He makes a show of studying the painting again and says, “Well ladies, I’ll see what I can do." He goes past them without another word, taking the stairs to the loft two at a time.

Katya steps closer. “What the hell was that?” There’s an edge to her voice Trixie’s never heard before.

“I told you to let me handle it." She's watching the loft. “He was doing his inner saboteur bit. He was fine.”

“I don’t care if he was fine.” Katya gets in front of her so Trixie has to meet her eyes. “You’re not allowed to lie for me. That’s not the deal.”

“Maybe you should let me decide what the deal is,” Trixie says quickly. “Since _work is for work_.”

“Girls,” Michelle is standing at the top of the stairs. “Is everything all right?”

“Fine,” they say in unison.

They go to opposite ends of the room, Katya to the sink and Trixie to the paintings, and they work through lunch like that, not speaking. Michelle brings them sushi before leaving early, but they just pick at it and leave it on the worktable. It's agony and if it wasn't for the deadline it would be worse, but Trixie's so exhausted and mad that she powers through it, putting the last touches on the series before Ru comes downstairs again at five to show her the changes for Tabitha.

It's a fairly extensive revision, one that doesn’t even disguise the mistake with another colour. “Just wait for that section to dry and go over it,” he says, as if timing was never an issue. “We’ll photograph the other three instead.” He looks from Katya to Trixie. “I hope you girls can learn to be on the same page after this. You should work as a team.”

“We will,” says Trixie.

“You bet,” says Katya.

Ru looks at them both a moment longer and then, satisfied or bored, leaves to get his coat. The second the door closes behind him Trixie turns to Katya with her hands up, warding her off. “Look, I just thought it would bother him less if I was the one who did it, so he doesn't think this could be a reoccurring thing.”

Katya's face is set. "You didn’t tell me because you knew I’d say no.” 

“Okay, sue me," she says. "I didn’t want you to be fired for some stupid mistake.”

“So you risk your own job?” Katya tosses her head back like she can’t begin to comprehend the stupidity of that. “Really clever, Trixie. Excellent strategy.”

“He’s not going to fire _me_.” She would laugh at the idea if she wasn't so frustrated. “They need me here.”

“Only because they trust you!" Katya's almost yelling now. "You just lied to your boss for no reason!”

“ _You_ were the reason! Stop shouting at me!”

Katya stands there with her eyes closed, like it’s taking everything she has to calm down. “It's not like I can't afford to lose this job,” she says finally. “It’s not vital to me, okay?” She looks at Trixie. “This place is your whole life.”

“Right, sure.” She turns away, wanting her smock off suddenly and fumbling with the buttons. “I’m just the poor little assistant who lives in the cracks in the floor, I _know_. Jesus, Katya,” She gives up and pulls the smock off over her head, throws it at a table where it immediately slides to the ground. “You act like I never go outside or something.”

“Do you? I mean, do you have any friends? You've been in this city three years." She doesn't say it unkindly and that makes it worse. The expression on her face is too close to pity. 

Trixie crosses her arms. “Would you rather I be dating other people?”

Katya opens her mouth, then closes it again without saying anything, and it isn’t like Trixie didn’t already know but it hurts differently, knowing for sure.

“We never talked about that,” Katya says finally.

“No shit. I wonder why.” Trixie puts up a hand to stop her from saying anything else. “No, you know what? There’s no point. It’s past five.” She looks at the door. “You can go.”

. . . .

When Trixie decided to move to Seattle everyone warned her she would hate the weather. There are no real seasons, they told her. It just rains or it doesn’t. Even Pearl, who grew up here, talked about special lights in the winter and well-timed trips to California, but Trixie’s never once minded the rain. She grew up in a tin-roofed trailer, slept for most of her childhood in a top bunk only a few feet from the ceiling. When a rainstorm rolled in across the fields and battered on the metal roof it helped drown out the sounds of fighting, of crying, of a television left on. It was like a blanket over everything.

The day she couldn’t convince Pearl that she was worth keeping, when Trixie left the apartment they’d just started decorating and drove to a parking lot, it was the rain on the roof of her car that kept her from falling apart. Since she was too little to remember she’s hardly ever cried and it’s too much like a corny line in a song to think weather could make up for that, but secretly she thinks it has to count for something.

The night after Trixie tells Katya to leave she lies awake in her little bedroom and it's too quiet. She carries her quilt and pillow up to the loft and curls up on the sofa where can hear the rain against the skylights, and it turns out she can cry, after all. She doesn’t need Katya for that.

. . . .

The next morning Trixie forces herself outside and down the street to buy a smoothie. She sits on a bench by the park, sipping the mauve liquid from the bottle like someone nursing a terrible hangover, and she almost texts Kim but doesn’t. She tells herself that's because it seems selfish, pestering her one friend about the same subject over and over. It’s not just that she feels humiliated.

When she gets back to the studio the botched painting is there on the wall and Trixie tries not to look at it. Her phone chirps from the other room and she doesn’t hurry over but walks, slowly, wondering if the twist in her stomach is hope or dread.

It’s only Michelle.

_**Everything all right with you and Katya? Ru mentioned an issue with the paintings** _

Trixie tries to imagine an honest response and doesn’t even know what it would be. _I thought we were something, I got it wrong, she just felt sorry for me._

 ** _Just a miscommunication,_** she types. _**No problem**_

_**You’ve done well with her. I wasn’t sure she’d stick it out this long and it seems like you two have a lot of fun** _

She closes her eyes, imagines going outside and throwing her phone under a passing car.

_**Yeah it’s going well, thanks Michelle** _

. . . .

It’s 10:30 that night before her phone chirps again, and this time it’s Katya.

**_Can I come talk to you?_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback is so great and I love it. Also I'm @westofklovharun on tumblr. One day I'll figure out how to put an actual link here but that day is not today.


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